Paris in the Summer

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Friday 9 July

Once again I’m writing this on board the Eurostar, this time travelling from Paris back to London, where we have approximately six hours before we board our Qantas flight to Bangkok, and then connect to Phuket. Boarding the Eurostar in Paris was a far inferior experience to that in London. In true Paris style, the queues were long and slow to move, there were insufficient check-in and customs officials, and the whole experience was just unpleasant. To top it off, we had to catch two trains to get to Gare de Nord station, the second of which was the fullest and hottest train of our trip - and we’ve been on a few! Thank goodness we didn’t have the big suitcases with us, as we would not have been able to squash into the carriage as we did. Anyway, we finally got on board the Eurostar train, and are now sitting on four seats that face each other, with fold-down tables between us. As we didn’t need to buy Dean a ticket, he is sitting between Ryan and I, the three of us in two seats. Who said travelling was fun?

I need to go back to Wednesday, our third day in Paris. We started off the day at the Louvre. What a beautiful building for a magnificent collection of art! Russel and I were very impressed, and would definitely return for another look, as we only saw an infinitesimally small portion of the work on display. Ryan was excited for another reason - we had printed out a ‘Da Vinci Code route’ and were planning to see all the aspects of the museum that were pertinent to the book.

This time we were in for a little bit of luck - there was a lengthy queue for the security bag scanning machine snaking from the main entrance at the Pyramid across the courtyard, but because of our ‘enfante’ in his pram, we were directed straight to the entrance where an open, circular lift took us down to the ticket offices. Unfortunately there were no shortcuts for us here, and we waited about forty minutes until we reached the front of the line to buy our tickets. There was a young Aussie male from Parramatta behind us in the line - we have bumped into Aussies just about everywhere in Paris . We made our way directly to the Denon wing, where all the Da Vinci Code action occurred, and looked around the spectacularly ornate red rooms. The Renaissance-style Louvre was used as a palace before being opened to the public by revolutionaries on 1793, and then renovated into a museum by Napoleon. We then, almost by accident, found ourselves in the ‘Mona Lisa room’, where hundreds of people were standing twenty-deep, cameras in hand, in front of the world’s most famous portrait, behind its glass facade. We managed to worm our way to the front, and had a good long look at Leonardo de Vinci’s best-loved painting. I must say I did feel impressed, as one does when in the presence of a famous person. I stood there a while, looking at her enigmatic smile and her eyes that seem to be following you wherever you are in the room. We then looked at the painting directly opposite her, which is in fact the largest painting in the entire collection, ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’ by Veronese, because it formed part of the De Vinci Code tour route that we were following. We went into the Grande Salon, where we saw amongst many others, Leonardo’s four or five other works that are housed in the Louvre. Before leaving, we detoured to see the Venus de Milo, not part of the De Vinci tour but one of the most popular exhibits at the Louvre, and passed many other ancient sculptures along the way, lots of them with missing body parts. We had eaten lunch midway through our visit at a cafe in the museum, after waiting in a queue (!) for a table, and were very pleasantly surprised to find that the seating was on an outside balcony overlooking the Pyramid and central courtyard. So while the sandwiches and salads were small and over-priced, we were happy to pay for the atmosphere and location, which was truly memorable.

We left the Louvre after a quick stop at the small inverted pyramid in the lower level. We walked through the lovely Tuileries Gardens and then all the way along the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, which was over three kilometres. Along the way we saw a large number of stands being erected for the Tour de France. We passed by all the well-known shops, stopping only at a patisserie to buy a baguette for Ryan, who had skipped lunch as there was nothing he fancied at the cafe at the Louvre. Unfortunately for my feminine instincts, any urge to shop has been quelled by a stronger urge to avoid unnecessary delays which result in whinging, moaning males. So on it was to the Arc de Triomphe, with the most famous street in Paris serving us only as a thoroughfare.

We purchased our tickets to go up the Arch and took the quicker and easier route via the lift. However the lift only goes as far as the souvenir shop, and there is still a narrow staircase to climb thereafter. The number of staircases we have schlepped the pram up and down, with Russel mainly doing the carrying! Just about every metro and train station has had at least one flight of stairs. It must be the most difficult city for anyone in a wheelchair to negotiate. We reached the top and admired the lovely 360 degree views of Paris, looking with particular interest back along the route we had just walked. Dean decided to lose it at this point. He had woken from a sleep in the pram in a foul mood and I think that all the travelling and schlepping and late nights had just caught up with him. He cried and cried for a chocolate brownie, a snack that we had brought with us but had consumed earlier. Eventually Ryan managed to distract him and calm him down. When we descended from the Arc, we found that the 6.30 pm daily ritual of the symbolic re-lighting of the eternal flame on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the centre of the Arch was about to commence. We watched the ceremony and Dean was briefly appeased by the sight of the French soldiers standing to attention with their machine-guns in arms. Then it was time to head home. We stopped at a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner, which was very good and much more reasonable than French cuisine.

Thursday was very hot and humid. We had considered going to Versailles for the day, but decided rather to stay in Paris and avoid any unnecessary travelling, which was proving very tiresome on the hot and crowded trains, with tonnes of stairs to schlep the pram up and down. We didn’t have a successful start to our day, however - we intended to do the Sewers Tour, thinking that the boys would find it enjoyable, but got there to find it was closed on Thursdays and Fridays. We then took two trains to the Jardin du Luxembourg, and headed for the adventure playground. This pay-to-play area proved to be a great success. Sitting in front of us were two Aussie women from Brisbane, a mother and daughter, who had brought their daughter/granddaughter to the playground, so we got chatting. The grandmother told us she had her purse pickpocketted the previous day, after being ‘bumped’. Afterwards we walked to the nearby St Sulpice church, which was undergoing a renovation of the facade, because it was another point of interest from a ‘De Vinci Code’ point of view. We particularly liked the fast-flowing fountain in the square in front of the church. Our next stop was the Catacombes, which we thought that Ryan in particular would find fascinating. However, once again the queue was long and after waiting in it for about five minutes, an employee told us that we might be waiting for nothing, as entry closed in 50 minutes. We decided to leave and make an earlier return to the apartment, to have some down-time, so that we could have the energy to do an after-dark walk to the Eiffel Tower.

At 8 pm we left the flat again, and went to a Japanese restaurant around the corner for a lovely sushi dinner. Thereafter we walked west along the left bank of the Seine to Passerelle Debilly, a pedestrian footbridge, where we crossed over. Midway across we passed a group of friends who were having a ‘piquenique’, sitting on a rug with their food and drink! We walked to the Jardins du Trocadero, where we were expecting to see the illuminated fountains spouting towards the Eiffel Tower. Instead we saw a huge TV screen strategically positioned in front of the Tower, and the garden was fenced off for World Cup Soccer spectators. We climbed the stairs behind the gardens for the beautiful view of the tower. Unfortunately wherever there are a lot of tourists, there are the ubiquitous though illegal souvenir sellers, and this was no exception. We walked back down towards the tower, and a 10 pm witnessed the illumination of the tower, which occurs nightly after dark on the hour. It was an amazing sight to behold the Eiffel Tower twinkling like an enormous Christmas tree! After five minutes the twinkling ceased and the tower was illuminated with spot lights, changing its colour to a beautiful, shining gold. It was a magnificent finish to a somewhat disappointing day!

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