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Published: November 6th 2011
Was I to find the archetypal Paris? The city of romance, with elegant bistros with waiters in starched white shirts, a place with a glamorous Bohemian underground of artists and socialites drinking red wine out of skulls and reading Sartre? Actually, my Autumnal three day foray in Paris showed a very different side: striking museum workers, beggars, endless queues of tourists, and bridges along the Seine lined police with body armour and rifles. Even if it wasn't quite the Paris I was expecting, I still had a great time, especially hanging out with two very good friends Tavish and Zoë (on their honeymoon from New Zealand no less) and being treated to some excellent hospitality.
My first morning was spent huddled in a corner of a Montmartre hostel drinking weak coffees and watching the All Blacks and France in the Rugby World Cup final. As I couldn't breathe for any part of the last 40 minutes it was a relief to join a fellow kiwi for a celebratory beer. We headed for a cute little bar with a head-on view of Sacre Coeur in the heart of Montmartre. As NZ were finally rugby world champions again, I was happy to
Sacre Coeur
looming amongst the touristic tatpay for the farcically expensive heinekens!
Paris, I hardly need point out, is one of the World's ultimate tourist Meccas. The Louvre is too famous to bother describing in a travel blog, and Versailles was truly magnificent - probably the best palace in the world and with gigantic gardens filled with mystery and delight, which were at the time set-off perfectly with autumn colour. The palace interior was so dripping in luxury that after a while I started to feel ill, like I'd gorged on too much chocolate. Of course I wasn’t alone. I can't blame Parisians for being cynical about tourists considering there are so many of us! An hour queue for the Louvre, the same at Versailles and I gave up trying to get to visit the belfry of Notre dame... 90 minutes queuing? Life's too short! And this is in late October - the mind boggles contemplating the crush of peak season in July.
On culinary matters the food and wine of Paris was as good as I could have hoped for: terrine, crépes, veal… and I ate my own body weight in ham and various cheeses. I was even lucky enough to experience the
French home-cooking, in the Clichy apartment of Rebecca and Gwillam, my kind hosts for my second and third nights. The melted raclette and quails' eggs poured over potatoes were beyond description. We would start mornings with a visit to a local boulangerie which had café éclairs good enough to send me into a Proustian madeleine-induced reverie!
As with anywhere as a visitor you take the bad with the good. My last day started early; I arrived at the Musée d'Orsay gallery imbued with a sense of innocent joy only to discover along with hundreds of other disappointed tourists that the gallery workers were on strike and it was closed for the day. No "Olympia" by Manet for me! I descended into deepest sulk and trudged off along the Seine. Half an hour later inspiration struck as I realised I had been walking towards a church that had been recommended to me by a medieval scholar friend: St. Chapelle. Inside this 12th century gothic masterpiece were over a thousand stained glass windows. Being there in autumn meant the low sun shined in through some of these windows casting a miraculous multi-coloured refracted light.
As a contrast, outside there was
definitely a sense of social unrest in the air: strikes, picketing and a large police presence. I would have assumed it was due to primarily to the deepening crisis of the Eurozone, but Rebecca said it was all perfectly normal at this time of year – after summer holidays when it’s still warm enough to stand outside shouting. Ah, the French!
Even if I did at times have to fight for my own share of Paris amongst the crowds, you can’t be as popular as this and not be worth a little effort!
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