Sunday, 15 September 2024, Paris: La Terrace, Army Museum, Violon d'Ingres

Written 14 October 2024

Sunday's excursion was to the Army Museum in the Hôtel des Invalides, which also houses an old folks' home for veterans, Napoleon's tomb, a magnificent chapel (from the days when the whole place was an old veterans' home, hence the name), and some current military operations. It's big (it has 11 interior courtyards!).

We set out, as usual, about 11:30 am and took the #8 metro to École Militaire (the French military academy, right next door to the Invalides) because we knew the museum entrance was on that side of the building.

We perused the menus of the many local eateries and settled at La Terrace. (All French restaurants are required by law to post their menus outside, a huge help to those of us deciding where to eat.) While we studied the menu, we were served this little bowl of a sort of party mix of mini pretzels and miniature crackers of several shapes and flavors.

I ordered a cheese omelet with fries; the mayo I requested for the fries arrived decoratively piped into a little metal chalice and was accompanied by a demitasse spoon.

David ordered my second choice, this salad featuring three medallions of ripened goat cheese on toasts and a healthy portion of cold green beans, drenched in a tasty mustard vinaigrette. The beans were great (he let me have a few); the French pick their beans young and sweet, and they understand what is meant by "tender-crisp." And the goat cheeses were on proper baguette slices, not the crummy square bread slices some places are using now. Each one was topped with a little splodge of honey.

Written 15 October 2024

For dessert, we shared an individual raspberry tart. Inside the sugar-cookie crust was a moist almond-cake base spread with raspberry jam, then the whole raspberries were arranged on top. Excellent.

Back out on the sidewalk, I got this shot of the Invalides dome (regilded for the bicentennial of the French revolution and still glistening) as we walked toward it.

On the way, we passed this memorial to all those, civilian and military, who have died overseas for France. The pedestal below the statue lists foreign wars, with their dates.

When we got to the usual entrance to the Invalides—we've been there many times before— we found that, drat, that entrance was open only from 2 to 6 pm. Some huge left-over Olympic structure was being removed and was blocking it. From 10 to 2, you had to use an entrance exactly opposite, the one facing the Seine down the Invalides' long esplanade. It was only 1:30 pm, so rather than wait half an hour, we set off on the 15-minute walk around the building—I told you it was big, and its broad dry moat makes the route around it even longer.

We paused, part way around, to avoid walking through a set of wedding photos being posed near one corner of the moat, but once past that, I got this shot of the line of cannons guarding the façade against attack from the Seine, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The sunny esplanade is usually teeming with bunny rabbits, which graze the lawns and live under the shrubbery, but I didn't see a single one this time—I wonder if they trapped them all out before the Olympics.

We entered through the Cour d'Honneur, the central and largest inner courtyard, shown here at the right.

Once inside, David, as usual, was enthralled, and I found enough of interest to hold my attention. These two pieces of statuary stood in one of the arcades surrounding the courtyard. I found no labels saying who they were, but the one at the left is certainly jubilant, and the one of the right looks to me like Napoleon himself, with his characteristic sideways hat.

We started with the Napoleon section, but David soon decided he's rather do the World Wars, so we walked around to the opposite wing (the hike is much shorter when you only have to circumnavigate the courtyard) and worked our way chronologically through WWI.

The statue at the left (photographed before we got to the WWI section), is a miniature of a much larger one commemorating General Chanzy and the second army of the Loire. It was erected in Le Mans in 1885, in memory of the 1871 Battle of Le Mans where France was defeated by the Prussians.

At the right is an 1895 Gatling gun.

Here's a cutaway view (made for instructional purposes) of a 75-mm explosive shell with its impact-action fuse. This type of shell weighed 5.5 kg and was filled with "mélinite," a new explosive more powerful than black powder and producing no smoke.

And at the right, in a case full of mannekins demonstrating various military uniforms of the period, is a representation of Madame Peuche, "cantiniére" (canteen lady) of the 67th infantry regiment, about 1880.

At the left here is a 1914 photo of the notorious Big Bertha, a mobile German artillery piece that could hurl 42-cm (1760-lb) shells up to 7.7 miles. No fortifictions of the day could hold up to them. David still considers it in extremely poor taste on the part of the Callaway golf-club company to call its driver "Big Bertha."

At the right is a genuine G7 Renault taxi, called a "Marne taxi." In September 1914, it suddenly became necessary to move 6000 French troops quickly from one section of the front to another, so 670 taxis like this were gathered on the esplanade of the Invalides and set off in convoy for the area in question, where they successfully moved the soldiers where they were needed. Apparently, in the end, the maneuver turned out to be of little tactical importance, but it became powerfully symbolic for the French.

The item at the left here is a portable rolling shield. A man could kneel inside and advance toward enemy lines under fire, for reconnaissance or to place explosives. In 1916, it and others like it were used to open about 50 breaches in barbed-wire networks at the battle of the Somme.

At the right is a model of a section of trench and its defenses, showing the kind of barbed-wire barrier that a charge would have to get past.

At the right is a model for a telescoping observation tower. It was made in 1916 or 1917 in Amiens, where a dedicated camouflage unit specialized in making "observation posts," like fake dead trees and fake dead horses, from which individuals could observe enemy lines. This tower wasn't disguised, it could just be moved forward as far as practicable and raised to a considerable height for observations.

The upper one looks like an attachment for a regular rifle. You can see the stock of the regular rifle fitting into it above. The lower one looks as though it was purpose-built.

The 1915 painting at the left here, by Jules Marie Auguste Leroux, shows an antiaircraft machine gun deployed on top of the Arc de Triomph.

And here's a model of the world's first assault tank, used by the British. The first ones were deployed in 1916.

I tried to photograph a model of a water-purification truck that could be moved with the troops to provide safe drinking water—it used chlorine to kill off the organisms causing cholera and typhoid—but in the pictures, it just looks like a truck. I couldn't get any of the apparatus inside to show up.

David found the displays much improved since our last visit, incorporating more and more accessible information and explanations. He especially liked the light table that detailed troop movements during the battle of Austerlitz. What I noticed about that display was that set out in front of it was a group of four little black folding stools, just like the ones in Germany! I looked around, and sure enough, a small rack in a corner held a few more. I was sorely tempted to commandeer one, but it was pretty clear they were intended only for use in that gallery. Still it's a step in the right direction. Maybe by the time we visit Paris again, they'll have caught on what a great thing it would be to make racks of them available to all visitors, near the lockers and cloak rooms at the entrance.

When our feet gave out (about the end of 1918), we headed back to our subway stop, leaving by the entrance they wouldn't let us use earlier, and back to the hotel to rest up for dinner. On the way, David's comment was that if you're interested in military history, the Army Museum is as good as the Louvre!

Later, we took the same subway trip back to the evening's restaurant, our old friend Le Violon d'Ingres, which is also near the École Militaire. It was once part of a cluster of restaurants on the Rue St. Dominique run by Christian Constant; Constant has since retired and left it in the hands of a protégé, but it's still eminently reliable—one of the best values for money we've found in Paris, always excellent, and open on Sunday, when most others aren't.

Ordinarily, we order à la carte at this place, but the eight-course "signature menu," on which the courses were listed rather than being chef's surprise, looked so good and incorporated so many of the dishes we would like to order that we chose that instead (with wine pairings for David but not for me).

The amuse-bouche has evolved over the years—we remember back when it was always fresh radishes and salted butter (the French eat butter on radishes for some reason), and it's on about it's fourth incarnation by my count—but for the last few visits it's been hot cheese gougères and almonds toasted with salt and piment d'Espelette, and that's what we got this time, in addition to this little loaf of plain bread accompanied by demisel butter.

Next to the bread is the amuse-bouche for the tasting menu (as opposed to the gougères, which you get just for walking in the door)—tartlets of diced raw salmon, cucumber, and horseradish.

The first actual course, at the right here, is araignée de mer (spider crab, probably Maja brachydactyla) in aspic in a pool of fennel cream lightly flavored with anise. The top surface is covered with caviar.

Next up was a "risotto" of spelt with chanterelle mushrooms.

That was followed by a sautéed scallop of duck foie gras with sautéed fruits of the season—fig, apple, pear, peach—all decorated with a comet of tart fruit purée to set off the richness of the liver.

The fish course was a slice of turbot "gilded" (i.e., lightly browned) in demisel butter, accompanied by articokes three ways: barigoule (the usual way of cooking artichokes, in stock, vinegar, and citrus), puréed (under the fish), and as crispy artichoke "chips. I'm not sure what the brown sauce was, but it was very tasty.

The meat was filet of Simmental beef in a black-pepper sauce with mashed potatoes. They brought the potatoes in the little copper saucepan you can see at the upper right, so we could serve ourselves at will.

Next came a "minestrone" of exotic fruits (mango, kiwi, and pomegranate arils) topped with a lemon-vanilla sorbet.

The dessert, front and center at the left here, is a "millefeuilles" (a Napoleon), filled with vanilla whipped cream and set on edge so that the layers run vertically, topped with more cream, then drizzled generously with a scrumptious salted caramel sauce! Yum and a half!

In the background, you can see two kinds of mignardises: little chocolate tartlets, tiny cookies topped with lemon cream and meringue disks, and a pair of madeleines.

Here's a better view of the four tiny mignardises, which presumably came with the tasting menu. The madeleines are the restaurant's normal mignardises for everybody.

If you're in Paris and looking for a splurge dinner, we can't recommend this place highly enough!