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Published: November 27th 2005
Musée du Louvre
A shot through the glass pyramid of the Louvre Museum by architect IM Pei.After arrived in Paris main train station from Brussels and then the
d’Artagnan Hostel (luckily, we still got our reservations at the fully booked hostel), we took off around 8:30 pm for dinner around the
Champs-Elysées, where the Eiffel Tower is. To get there, we need to transfer the Metro twice, and it took us more than an hour just to get to the area. Our hostel is located in the East Paris, and the Eiffel tower is, of course, on the west side of Paris. We were hoping to find an inexpensive restaurant around the area at this hour.
First incident in Paris with a Chinese restaurant We arrived at Eiffel Tower base around ten, just enough to see the ten o’clock show with flashing lights for about ten minutes. After the show, we ended up at this Chinese restaurant by the tower where I ordered the chicken fried rice dish for €4.40 and water, while Ryan and Jason each ordered a 1,5 L Coke. As I knew that €4.50 per bottle of Coke was way over the boys' budget of spending for drink, I didn't say anything at first.
But this is where it gets
Arc de Triomphe
A must to do in Paris. interesting.
The price of the Coke bottle turned out to be €4.50, as suggested on my revised menu, but for some reason, the restaurant missed the Hardy boys' menu, which still showed €2.50. Jason, has very strong opinion about dignity and customer service, talked to the Chinese waiter who couldn't speak English. She brough several Chinese people with her, and none of them understand or spoke English as well. Er, as I understood a little bit of Chinese, I couldn't help anything in translation, so I kept it quiet. The voice from both parties started to raise up, and I picked up couple Chinese phrase such as "
Seng ching ping" meaning "Crazy" and some rude comments. I told Jason that I didn't mind to spare the difference of cost, since I didn't want to have any troubles, but Jason was all about the principles and "customer always right" attitute. Well, I thought that was a nice American thing, which would work in the States, but in Paris? Not so sure about what restaurant thinks about their customers.
Since I didn't have any problem with my order, I paid the €4.40 for my rice meal. Jason, of course, still
Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris
Jason and I in front of the Notre Dame. refused to pay the desired amount, and just left €2.50 for the price he agreed on to pay. After putting down our payment on the table, we tried to walk out casually and a little bit nervous, as the waiter, now having the bill and the money on her hand, starting to call us frantically, "
Monsieur ... Monsieur ...", and when I looked back, I saw some of the male cooks started to run after us. Shoot, I thought, but at the same time, I didn't want to start run as if we did something wrong, but Jason and Ryan,maybe from the feeling of guilt, walked so much faster than I did. I walked as fast as I could without running, but finally the two running Chinese ladies caught me and grabbed my shirt. I told them that this wasn't my business at all, as I paid what I had, but of course it was like talking to the next trees in English, nobody understood that. The next thing I knew, Jason yanked me from those ladies, and he started to yell back, saying that the price of the coke was €2.50, and with our subway tickets in hand, we
Jules Verne restaurant
This is on my to-do-list-before-I-die, but at this moment, it is way too expensive. An excuse to come back to Paris. They even have their own elevator to the 2nd tier. entered the subway threshold.
I felt really bad, because I understood completely the situation, from both parties. But apart from being guilty, I stayed neutral, but if needed, I would stand on the Hardy boys' side. Some random thoughts started to fill in. How if the ladies reported the incident to the police, then they were actually would track us down and deport and black list us from the EU community. All of us were nervous, and tried to hide off the subway camera, and the damn subway wouldn't come for a long time. Finally it came and we hopped in. I hate confrontation, and I didn't expect it happening at our first night in Paris.
Climbing up the Eiffel Tower I had expected that the Eiffel Tower would be big, but I never guessed that it is THIS big. There were four legs of the tower, and each tower has their own characteristics. Jules Verne restaurant owns a leg of the tower, having their own elevator to their restaurant in the second tier of the structure. As I was excited to have dinner here to complete my to-do-list-before-I-die, but the menu posted suggested the main
Base of Eiffel Tower
A glamorous shot of the base. entrée would be €45 each. Er, no. Maybe when I come back later, not as a student.
Our second day started at 7.30 am, and even though I was still tired and sleepy, I had to get up in order to see more of Paris today. Breakfast was not as promising as we had in mind, especially when everything tasted like water, including the watery milk and watery o.j. So I ended up just eating fruits and water. Where was all the French breakfast culinary?
We followed the exact route we have arranged as the night before: the
Bir-Hakeim stop at the M6. Arriving at the stop, we were still nervous about the incident last night, thinking that the Chinese people confronted us last night were still lurking around looking for us. We tried to walk as fast as we could pass the street where the Chinese food restaurant was, but fortunately they were nowhere to be seen.
Eiffel Tower reflects different feeling during the day, even though we went to the same spot last night before. As we were young, we decided to climb up the tower by stairs, as we couldn’t do the thing when
Eiffel Tower from a distance
A night shot of Eiffel Tower. we were getting old. So we paid €3.20 to access the stair, and it was a wonderful and yet tiring experience. The stairs were curly, and shaped like the tower itself, following the curving line of the foot. First level passed by, then the second. Once a while, elevators were passing us by.
Reaching the second level of the tower, we found out that the stair section to go all the way to the top was closed for visitors. We were extremely disappointed, but nothing we could do except purchasing the elevator ticket to the top. The weather was semi-foggy and was cloudy that morning; this helped us to cope with the temperature from working out in the summer and it was a good thing that we started out early in the morning and beat the rush, as later we found out that the tourist line to go up was WAY long.
With €2.30 more, we proceeded our way to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The elevator is semi transparent, with half of the roof is made out of glass, and glass wall. It is a fast elevator, and less than one minute we reached the top
of the Eiffel Tower. The view was wonderful; for a while, morning misty fog covering over Paris, and then, the view was opened up. We recognized many structures from above: The Notre Dame, the Musée du Louvre, and the Arc de Triomphe.
Ile de la Cité, the island where Notre Dame sits, seemed really close from the Tower, and after climbing up the Eiffel Tower, we were so cocky that we could conquer anything else in Paris. We decided to walk to it.
Walking along the Seine To reach the Notre Dame, we knew that we needed to walk along the Seine, and eventually we would see the island sometime. Enjoying Paris by looking at the Seine. The water is so much clearer than the Tiber in Rome, at least there were no mount trash everywhere. The water looks like normal water, with a little tint of green. So this was the famous Seine, where the lovers walk along it in romantic mood.
On the way before we reach the
Ile de la Cité, we managed to spot several Parisian structures: Ponte Alexandre III, Musée d'Orsay, Musée du Louvre, and Pompidou Centre. The Pompidou Centre
Queue to top of Eiffel Tower
It is still around 9 in the morning, but the tourists start forming a line to go up to the top. was on Ryan's to see list in Paris, so we decided to spend an extra time examine it. The inside of the structure seemed to be turned inside out, with many pipes and installation color coded accordingly to their function: water, heating, and other utilities. I believe Renzo Piano and some other prominent architects designed this museum. Unfortunately we weren't big into modern art, and Ryan found it very disappointing that the content of the museum was under his expectation.
Unfortunately we didn't have the opportunity to check out the
Musée d'Orsay. The museum is one of the must to see museum in Paris, and the museum occupied an old train station terminal, and seeing it from posters and pictures, it is a very neat place. And of course the permanent collection of the museum is unbelieveable; many works of van Gogh, Rembrandt and Vermeer are part of it. This is a good excuse to come back to Paris.
Ile de la Cité, the Notre Dame island One of the greatest Cathedral I've ever been, Notre Dame still standing up as if it is posed for pictures. I kept thinking of Victor Hugo's
Hunchback of Notre We made it!
Jason and I with the tower from below. Dame, where Quasimodo dancing around the bells and the gargoyles on top of the church (thanks a lot, Disney!). But no Quasimodo to spot here.
Ryan had a bad memory card, he ran out of space so he needed to delete some pictures. As the result, I was the photographer of the day, shooting as much angle as possible around this magnificent structure. The cathedral reminded me of the Duomo in Milan, with the extremely tall ceiling and darkness, but yet inside, the rose windows glow in the colorful lights throughout the space. Walking along the naves of the church, looking up and around minus the tourists, I could feel the peaceful place and the power of God.
Notre Dame's rose windows are the most georgeous thing I've ever encountered. The cathedral has three medieval rose windows, each spans 43 feet diameter. That's more than 7 people standing on top of each other, and the windows are still taller than them.
Er. For some reason, we became the Bourne Identity maniac, everything we have been seeing in Europe is somewhat related to the movie. We wanted to see the angle where Jason Bourne spent a night by
Ryan in front of the Pompidou
We are disappointed with the content of the museum. the Notre Dame, so to the best of our knowledge, we found a spot at the left side of the Cathedral, and started to snap pictures of crazy stunts with the Notre Dame in the background. Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that we are tourists.
Unfortunately, our plan to visit the
Sainte-Chapelle at the island by the
Palais de Giustice wasn't happening. The goverment tries to control the amount of tourists visiting the famous church by putting more hassles to us: through security gate, the €6.50 entrance fee (what?!) and the long tourist line. So instead, we went back to the hostel for grabbing Ryan's new memory card and a couple of hours of nap.
Arc de Triomphe: triumphal arch for Paris Having spent two hours at the hostel resting, we were finally refreshed to continue our Paris experience. We were hoping to be having a relaxing evening, as all of us started to be so cranky about traveling. For the last three months, our brains are cramped with overwhelming experiences and sights of Europe, and believe it or not, we are ready to go back home to the States.
So
Rose Window of the Notre Dame
The world famous rose windows of Notre Dame. the obvious place to achieve the evening's goal was the
Arc de Triomphe. The arch is huge, bigger that I had thought, and after walking around with delight of the new stucture for us, we decided to visit the viewing platform. The Paris scene from above is amazing, with radial roads lead out of the arch. We spot many interesting sites, including the
La Défense along the
Avenue des Champs-Elysées, and the
Basilique du Sacré Coeur in
Montmartre. Here, I declared that one of my favorite spots in the world to be at the top of Arc de Triomphe, Paris, facing southeast looking at the
Avenue des Champs-Elysées.
Meanwhile, Ryan and Jason were talking in serious tone, I believe they were resolving some "twin" problems, ina quality time together. I decided not to interupt, and continue enjoying my time here. It was an interesting traffic down at the bottom of the arc, where the twelve streets meet at one roundabout, and many Parisian drivers think that they have the right to move.
After got a quick glimpse of the Moulin Rouge and Hard Rock Cafe Paris where we had our dinner, we were signing off by going back
Bourne Identity spot
Act like a spy in Paris ala Bourne Identity. Where is the cathedral? to our hostel.
Musée du Louvre and Musée Picasso define our museum day According to our travel book and from what I've heard, the Metro provides a quicker way to enter the Louvre - without having to wait for hours in the tourist queue at the main entrance of the museum. While we couldn't find the entrance down at the Metro, finally we emerged to the top to the main entrance by the glass pyramid by IM Pei - voila, the line wasn't that busy as I had thought. We entered the Louvre without any significant wait.
At the ticket booth, we found out that if you're an art or architecture student, your entrance fee is waived. Frantically, we searched through our belongings to prove that we are indeed architecture students to avoid the harsh entrance fee - without any result. University card - none. ISIC card - none. Passport/visa - none. The only thing I could think of states our major of study would be a dean's letter, which was stripped from us when we entered the EU. Well, nothing we could do but paying the entrance fee and enjoy the museum.
Musée du Eiffel Tower in a distance
From the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Louvre is huge! All the famous paintings and sculptures seem to overwhelm the whole museum, and we walked pass Monet, Picasso, van Gogh, Caravaggio. You name it, they got it. Our holy conquest was to find two things all visitors must see - Monalisa and the Venus di Milo.
Monalisa is so much smaller than I had thought. Perhaps because the painting has been stolen three times, and every single time it got stolen, the thieves cut the painting off its frame, creating a smaller window view. Well, there she was, sitting behind a protective glass wall, smiling as if she knows the mystery of the universe.
If the Louvre is not enough, we managed to visit our second museum of the day, the
Musée National Picasso, located in historical landmark of
Hôtel Salé. Nothing much to share, except that we were enjoying the collection for a couple of hours.
If I could have more time in this city, I would visit the
Musée d'Orsay.
Parc des Buttes Chaumont The last site we visited during the trip was the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, a must for any landscape architect. Strolling around the park, I
An Arc de Triomphe observation
The radial pattern roundabout doesn't work the greatest. A lot of accidents happen every day. Paris drivers and roundabout are not the best combination. was reminded all the design theory I wrote about during one of my precedent study paper for my professor Julia Badenhope's studio. One thing came into my mind: reclamation.
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