One of my favorite SF series is Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy, set in an alternate universe where Richard the Lionheart survived the wound he sustained during the siege of Chaluz, so the Angevin Empire did not fall, leading (waves hands here) to a world where magic occupies the role that science fills in our world. Today, we visited Château Gaillard, overlooking the commune of Les Andelys; Richard built the castle to defend Normandy from the French.

Richard built defenses in depth against the French; one of them was a chain he used to block the river (though he would allow the French to pass if they paid toll!). One of the ends of the chain was on this island, which now hosts a beautiful residence.

Les Andelys is actually made up of two towns – Petit-Andely, where we were docked, and Grand-Andely, about half a mile inland. We visited Petit-Andely’s church, Église Saint-Sauveur du Petit-Andely.

Figures of Evil (facing England) and Good (facing France) support columns near the apse (the French king paid for the church to be build a couple of centuries after France absorbed Normandy).

Love for the French king was not universal among the workers, even if he did pay for the church – our guide pointed out a lion (facing England) and a monkey (facing France) in the transept.

Petit-Andely has a number of half-timbered buildings, like this restaurant. In its previous life, it was a gas station and the upper story was covered with red plaster!

We left Petit-Andely and got on a bus to ride up to Château Gaillard. Our guide took us through the ruins and told us the story of the final siege of the castle after Richard’s death; his brother, King John (of Magna Carta fame), refused to send aid to the castle and the French were able to take it and eventually all of Normandy.

We looked around the ruins for a few more minutes, then set out on the walk down to the village.

Our guide pointed out the locally-brewed Richard the Lionheart beer, but buying beer seemed unnecessary while on a cruise!

Tonight, the ship is sailing to Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine; we’ll spend most of the next two days there.

We left our AirBnB this morning to go to the AmaLyra and drop off our luggage. It was far too early for cabins to be ready, so we had a choice: sit in the lounge for a few hours or go out and continue exploring. It wasn’t a difficult choice.

We still had one Rick Steves walk to do – Rue Cler, which is a short (two blocks) shopping street that he says is typical for an upscale Parisian neighborhood, with lots of fresh food and activity. We took the Metro and discovered that it was already Shen Yun season in Paris.

The two blocks that Rick Steves put on his tour have been pedestrianized (though we did have to dodge a few delivery vehicles and taxis), making for a pleasant walk. We stopped and enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smells at several stores, including a wonderful greengrocer (whose prices were noticeably higher than the greengrocer near our AirBnB on Rue Saint-Honore in the 1st), a great chocolate shop (they got some of our money!), and a branch of Mariage Freres tea shops (they got our money, too). We didn’t go into the seafood restaurant which used to be a horsemeat butcher, but we did have lunch at Café du Marché and quite enjoyed it.

We still had plenty of time to kill before the official embarkation time, so we decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower.

We still had plenty of time, so we walked the rest of the way back to the ship, passing by the Olympic Breaking venue and the Japanese Cultural Center on our way. Oh, and we got a view of the other side of the tower.

We got to the ship a few minutes after official embarkation started and were greeted warmly by the crew.

We unpacked, met new friends, listened to the briefings (and were grateful that we didn’t have to do a lifejacket drill), and finally were released to have dinner. We sailed upstream (east) for a short while, giving me one last chance for a picture of the tower and the Statue of Liberty, before turning downstream for our overnight sail to our first stop in Les Andelys for a tour of Château Galliard.

We went to bed last night before any polls had closed in the US, but when we awoke it was all over but the final counting. We had breakfast at L’Express Bar, which, sadly, had TVs tuned to the news (in French, but they were showing video from Mar-a-Lago). The food was good, but my appetite was lacking.

We went back to the apartment; it took a while to get up the energy to go out, but eventually we did so we could finish the Rick Steves Historic Paris walk we’d started yesterday. We picked up the walk at Place Dauphin, which was commissioned by King Henri IV and named for his son, the Dauphin (which means “dolphin”).

We crossed the street to look at Square du Vert-Galant at the tip of Ile de la Cité.

The walk was supposed to end on Pont Neuf, but we’d crossed that bridge several times and wanted to go somewhere else. Diane had seen a recommendation for Maison de Victor Hugo, so walked there. As usual, we stopped for photos and made some detours, including lunch at L’As du Fallafel in the Marais.

As we left the restaurant, I was accosted and asked if I was Jewish – I said “yes”, and soon found myself being “helped” to don tefillin for the first time in many years!

I was a little surprised not to be offered the tefillin so I could keep performing the mitzvah on my own, but it’s just as well.

We continued on our way to Place des Vosges and the museum. The area was plastered with posters like the one below (both English and French versions). I waited until I was back in the apartment and could use a QR reader to safely examine the code – it’s a link to a Parisian “pixel artist”‘s Instagram page!

We finally reached the Place des Vosges, which we’d seen on some Paris Walks in the past; the museum was in the far corner. As advertised, it’s Victor Hugo’s apartment, filled with artwork relating to his works as well as items he’d owned.

On our way back to the apartment, I was taken aback by a huge church and decided we should go in and see if it was as magnificent on the inside as it was on the outside. It was.

Later, we went out for a pre-dinner stroll through the Louvre and the Tuleries.

One of France’s oldest private detectives is just down the street from our apartment; Atlas Obscura had the details.

The street we’re on has many, many restaurants – La Renommée certainly has the most interesting façade (and impressive prices to go with it). We chose to return to Rarita for comfort food (Italian).

Tomorrow, we start the next-to-last phase of our trip; I’m going to miss this neighborhood (and all of Paris).

Once in a while, a Facebook suggestion in my timeline is actually useful, and today was one of those days. A few days ago, it surfaced a post from the Les Frenchies group which suggested going to Hotel de la Mârine to enjoy seeing opulence without schlepping out to Versailles and fighting the crowds there.

We followed the advice and walked there this morning; it was grey and dreary, but even a grey day in Paris offers delights.

The building itself is enormous and glorious; the French Navy used it as their headquarters for more than two centuries and preserved things very well. We toured the apartments of the Intendants of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronned and we quite enjoyed it. They give you a headset which offers (sometimes amusing) commentary as you go through the apartments (much opulence, though not up to Versailles’ level); you also get to explore the State Rooms. The building also played a role in the Revolution.

The views of the Place de la Concorde are terrific (I can only imagine what they’d look like on a sunny day).

After lunch, we decided to follow Rick Steves’ Historic Paris Walk, beginning at Notre Dame. They expect to reopen the cathedral in December; right now, there are bleachers opposite the main entrance to let you see the façade and the progress that’s being made – it’s actually easier to see the entrance than it was before the fire.

The next stop on the tour was the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, in a little park across from the rear of Notre Dame. It was sobering, especially considering the stakes of the Presidential election today.

We spent a long time at the Memorial before resuming the tour; our next visit was to Église Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, a Mekite Greek Catholic church on the Left Bank. It’s older than Notre Dame (and much smaller).

Our next stop was at Shakespeare and Company, another place I’d heard of but had never visited. We left empty-handed.

We passed by the Church of St. Séverin and the Fountain of Saint Michael.

And that was it for today; we’ll have to finish the walk tomorrow.

We had a smooth flight from Reykjavik to Paris last night. When we arrived, there were signs all over CDG warning that there was limited service on the RER B line and “we invite you to take a different means of transportation”. We took the hint and took a taxi, which brought us to the door of our AirBnB, the same one we’d stayed at in October at the beginning of our adventure. It almost felt like coming home!

This morning, we enjoyed the street scene while we ate breakfast at Taverne de l’Arbre Sec near the apartment.

We’ve been to Paris many times and have seen lots of the “must-see” places, some several times, so we decided to give ourselves the gift of unstructured time in Paris for this leg of the trip. This morning, we wandered over to Galeries Lafayette.

Galeries Lafayette is worth spending some time exploring; it’s 130 years old and glories in its history and beauty. It even provides stunning views of Paris and of its dome…for free (although you do have to reserve a timeslot if you want to stroll the Glasswalk inside the dome).

On the way back to the apartment for lunch, we passed a place that brought back fond memories of my ten weeks in Manhattan in 1980 when I attended the IBM Systems Research Institute. They’ve been gone from Manhattan (well, the entire US) for a long time, but there’s still a Brentano’s in Paris!

We’ve wanted to visit Saint-Chapelle again but couldn’t get tickets the last two times we were here, so I did book ahead and we went there this afternoon. It’s inside the security perimeter of the Palais du Justice, so there were gendarmes with machine guns everywhere! Once we got inside, though, we were back in the Middle Ages, enjoying Louis IX’s work.

The exit took us through the courtyard of the Palais of Justice – I guess we could have gone into the building, but there was no real reason to do so.

Our ticket included admission to the Conciergerie, where the Revolutionary Court sentenced Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette to death and where Marie-Antoinette spent her final weeks. The building itself is normally pretty empty, but they give you a tablet that shows AR versions of the rooms which depict them at various times in history. Currently, there’s also an exhibition of contemporary art from Benin in the Salle des Gens d’Armes (the huge hall of the soldiers occupying most of the area of the building).

We took a meandering route back to the apartment.

We had an unfashionably early dinner at Crêperie Saint-Honoré, walked around a bit more, and called it a night.