Jamie Malanowski

PARIS TO NORMANDY TO PARIS, SEPTEMBER 21: LE MARAIS AND LES INVALIDES

After a week on board the ship, we moved to the Pullman Hotel in the Montparnasse area. Nice place! We started the day with a walking tour of the picturesque Le Marais neighborhood. We saw the beautiful Place des Vosges, where Victor Hugo lived when he wrote the beginning of Les Miserables and other significant works. Once an aristocratic district, Le Marais is home to many buildings of historic and architectural importance. After the French Revolution, the district fell into disrepair and was abandoned its cachet; now it is again one of the more fashionable areas of Paris. It was also known for a time as the Jewish section of Paris, which explains its numerous Jewish-themed museums and monuments.

After the tour, we headed to Les Invalides, the French Military Museum which also houses the tomb of Napoleon and other notables, including Napoleon II; Napoleon’s brothers Jerome and Joseph; the heart of Catharina of Württemberg, Jerome’s wife of Jérôme;  the heart of Théophile Corret de la Tour d’Auvergne, named by Napoleon the “first grenadier of the Republic”; Field Marshall Ferdinand Foch, the  Supreme Allied Commander on the Western Front during the First World War in 1918; and Field Marshall Hubert Lyautey, a leading colonialist in Indochina and Morocco. 

 

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