An all new experience in Paris

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Kos to Athens… Geoff does not usually see many sunrises, but we were at the Kos airport in plenty of time to see the pre-dawn light and eventually the sun appear.
And so onto Paris. We touched down at about 3 pm (local), but as the plane was about 6 kms. from the baggage collection, there was quite a wait before the bags appeared, but at least they did appear. We decided to take the train into the city to a station that is walking distance to our hotel. Unfortunately we did not foresee the difficulties in actually getting out of the station which was more like an underground city! Actually exiting the station was not only a mental challenge, but a physical one as well which we found when Geoff tried to take it his bags through the little exit barrier. The barriers are the horizontal guillotine style…bang it clamped tight onto his suitcase and would not let go! Geoff rescued the carry-on, but could only push the suitcase backwards to Marg who now had 2 suitcases and a carry-on to manage. With a little help from the natives, she was able to exit via the gate for disabled and mothers with prams (and stupid tourists – if my French interpretation is correct).
After eventually finding daylight, we had no idea where we were. After a short stroll with the bags in tow, we did find that we were more or less heading in the right direction (Marg has a different view of that, but in the scheme of things we were at least on the right side of the station). By now it was about 4.30pm and the workers were leaving, so the narrow pavements were a struggle to negotiate with the bags. We did eventually get to the hotel (Hotel Louvre des Bons Enfants) at around 5.00pm and were very pleasantly surprised to find that it was extremely well located next to the Louvre. It was a typical ‘private’ hotel (i.e. not a big chain hotel) with VERY small lift and VERY narrow corridors, but the room was quite a reasonable size and clean. After a refreshing shower and dinner at a little restaurant next door we headed to the 9.00pm show at the Moulin Rouge. Followers of our blog will have wait until we can give you details verbally but suffice to say, the show was terrific and at least what was expected. Geoff has packed 3 of the dancers into his bag and is hopeful they will still be alright by the time we get home. We estimated that by the time heads hit pillows we had been awake that day for 21 ½ hrs.
Friday 3rd and we were up early and off to the office of Tourisme Francaise to book a tour to Monet’s Garden. They could not get us on a tour on Sat or Sun, so we left a bit disappointed, and headed for Notre dame which was absolutely stunning. We then walked to le Musse d’Orsay to see the exhibition by Manet (note the different spelling) and the impressionists. By now it was 11.30 and we joined the queue… One and half hours later… we were in with about 97,000 other art lovers. The duration of our visit was about the same as the queue time! We returned to the hotel and while Marg rested, Geoff did some exploring. We dined with one of Geoff’s colleagues- Christian, from his former work, at a little bistro near the Pantheon and the Sorbonne, followed by a beer in a lovely little jazz club/café called the Le Petite Journal. Bed at midnight and Marg is beginning to think she will never get an early night.
Saturday and we have to change hotels to a far more upmarket hotel (Hotel du Louvre) included in the tour package. We had really done extremely well with the choice of our first hotel as the second was only 80mtrs away. After an early lunch, we were off to the Louvre – the entry was only 150 mtrs from the hotel door! Marg did a wonderful job of navigating or way through the Ancient Egyptian section and then onto the Apartments of Napoleon 3rd. That evening we had the ‘meet and greet’ “cocktails” for the tour. Geoff got 1 frothy ¾ glass of tepid beer (he did well; one guest showed him the bottle of beer he was given and it was 1% alc!). Marg had a Chardy 1/3 of a glass, and there was no red wine much to the horror of the assembled Aussies. As soon as the introduction was complete the grog disappeared in the blink of an eye. The room was extremely hot and stuffy and we were out of there as quickly as possible. We found a lovely little bistro about 500 metres from the hotel and sat outside at a table and had a three course meal for 22 euro each. The alcohol over here is expensive and the bottle of wine was nearly as much as the 2 meals. Again we got to bed after 11. By the way it is daylight until after 10pm here and you don’t realize how late it is. We had decided to book the Monet’s garden tour for Monday afternoon as it was a free afternoon and Geoff sprinted across the river and back to make the booking.
Sunday saw us up early for a sightseeing tour. By coincidence we reached the d’Orsay about the same time we were there on Friday and Geoff estimates the queue would have been at least 2 hrs long! The tour included a visit to the Eiffel Tower (2nd level) and we had nearly an hour to take in Paris from the observation deck. Photo’s were not good because it was overcast and with quite a lot of smog. In the afternoon we took the train to Sacre Couer at Montpanasse…
Herein beginneth a lesson…Geoff believes it started at the station behind the hotel where we bought train tickets from a guy standing by the ticket machine with a fist full of tickets – “I work for the station, 2 hour tickets …” we bought tickets rather than struggle with the French on the machine and proceeded to the train. To get to where we were going, you need to change lines at a station called Concorde and we negotiated that including an elevator and an escalator. We bought tickets to ride the funicular to the chapel and took a short walk around the chapel and retired to a coffee shop back towards the station. At the station we found our 2 hour tickets did not work anymore??? Bought some new tickets and took the train back. At this stage I (G) should tell you that I had made a point of putting my wallet in a small 3 compartment bag that has a flap that clips shut over to cover the zippered compartments. We bought it along for carrying things like sunnies and cameras etc. We arrived at Concorde and negotiated the elevator, and headed for the escalator. I got on with Marg behind (it was narrow and a squeeze for 2 abreast), suddenly the escalator stopped. A man behind Marg pushed past her and brushed past me – no more than a glancing contact, but enough… We walked to the top of the escalator and I stopped to put away the map that Marg was carrying – the bloody flap is open and the 3rd compartment zip is also open. The wallet is gone. Marg did not see it happen. I did not feel the bastard undo the clasp and unzip the compartment and get the wallet from the behind the sunglass cases! The natives say we were lucky as these pricks apparently can be violent. I only wish Margaret would caress me like that bastard did! (I do, but he just doesn’t feel that either!
A very nice policeman managed with broken English to take my statement in an hour and a half and 9 pages of documentation. Then on to cancelling the cards… Suddenly we were without any money and without any way of getting it (almost). Fortunately Margaret’s bank debit card and her Travelex cards were not cancelled, so we were able to get some money on Monday, which gave Marg a lot of comfort (especially as she was in charge of giving Geoff only as much as she deemed necessary!), but it was an interesting reaction when I told the hotel reception that the credit card that they had taken as guarantee was now cancelled, and I had no other that could be used.
That evening we had had a river cruise with dinner included and a small bottle of wine between two, so fortunately we could still eat and drink (although less than we would have liked.) There is nothing quite like being stuck in a foreign country without a euro to your name and no one to ask for a loan. The cruise was wonderful and the meal was very interesting with en entre platter with 6 small plates of different things on it. For main we had a choice of salmon, duck and steak. Most of the Aussies went for the steak, but Marg tried duck which was quite raw the difficult to carve. C’est la vie. Dessert was three little tastes of different things. We went up on the roof and saw the Eiffel Tower which is lit up, but once every hour it sparkles like a sparkler. There were huge clouds and spectacular lightening which some of our group had time to regret a little later. As the cruise finished one of the busses was waiting (ours fortunately) but the other bus was a little late. We had just got into the bus when the heavens opened – about 30 Aussies got drowned. We still had the tour of Paris lights to do. The rain cleared a little and we could see some of the things that were being pointed out but we were glad to get back to the hotel. Again it was bed after midnight.
On Monday morning we had a few priorities – 1. GET SOME MONEY. 2. Do some washing. The Hotel de Louvre would do washing for you but at 20 euro for a pair of pyjamas it was beyond our means. It only cost us about 6 Euro for all of the items. While the washing was doing Geoff insisted that he take Marg to see Galleries La Fayette, which he said was just around the corner (about 1.5 kms away). It was beautiful, expensive and one of us felt like a tramp in there. (A hot and sweaty tramp at that).
We had already paid for our trip to Monet’s garden so we took that trip on Monday afternoon and had (you guessed it) another walk to the bureau of tourism to get the small 8 seater for our trip into the country. We did love the gardens and also the drive there where we saw countryside that we wouldn’t have done had we not gone. Coming back we went past several interesting villages, one of which had had people living in houses hewn out of the cliff sides (rather like Coober Pedy),only these were several thousand years old. Back to the hotel and Geoff raced out to by himself a wallet which he bought at the most expensive shop in Paris – Galleries La Fayette. Then pack the bags and have dinner and retire to bed - this time about 10.30. We had to have our bags outside the bedroom at 7u am and be down at breakfast then, ready for a departure at 8 am. Gee we Aussies are good, everyone was ready early and waiting. We have typed this on the bus and have just crossed from France into Belgium. Breakfast in Paris, lunch in Belgium, dinner in Holland.

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