Paris. 'Nuff said.

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Paris is like Disneyland for the cultured: there's no possible way to see it all in one trip. If you tried, you'd be dead on (or maybe off) your feet and still be only about 1/10 of the way there. That didn't stop us from attempting to catch the highlights, though, in part II of our adventure.

It was raining in Bordeaux on Monday morning, so I wasn't so very sad to leave. On our way to Gare Saint Jean, the beautiful 19th century train station in Southern Bordeaux, we stopped at Brioche Doree (which is pronounced roughly bree-OASH dor-RAY, as I found myself constantly reminding my mom, who kept saying dor-REE) for a quick breakfast. That means tea and steaming hot chaussons au pomme; like light, flaky empanadas filled with sweet apple goo. Mmm, apple goo. We also picked up a couple sandwiches for the train ride. This is no Subway, people. When I say "sandwiches" I mean savory, expertly seasoned concoctions of vegetables, meats, and cheeses nestled between slices of the world's most perfect French baguette; crunchy, toasty crust on the outside and fresh-baked goodness on the inside. MM. Can you tell I haven't had dinner yet?

Anyway, we took the tram to the train station and climbed aboard Voiture 8 of our TGV train, destination Paris, Gare Montparnasse. The ride itself was relatively uneventful; I dozed (open-mouthed and oh-so-attractively, I'm sure) and my mom read, since the grey, rainy day did nothing for the view outside our window. For the next four hours we could have been planning our impending metro trip through Paris, but apparently we didn't think of it.

We arrived at Gare Montparnasse (Southern Paris, below the Latin Quarter) in the early evening, in the rain. Our mission now was to get to our hotel, which unfortunately was quite a bit more North on the other side of the river, near the Opera. No problem; we'll take the metro!

And here commences a tale of dragging luggage, getting stuck in turnstiles, and probably grunting. Let me take you through it. When you get off of a train at Montparnasse (or any big train station in France, for that matter), you don't just get off a train and walk out. Noooo. You get out of your seat, stamping your feet a bit to get your butt to wake up, and you concentrate, trying to remember where you stuck your luggage when you got on the train several hours ago. You shuffle along the aisle, wanting so badly to get to that place, but instead you're stuck waiting behind Madame Oblivious who is putting on her coat at le pace d'un escargot. While she decides that she needs help getting her 2 ton bag down from the overhead rack, soliciting help from Monsieur Helpful-but-also-not-in-a-hurry, you are on tippy toes, craning your neck to see if you can spot your bag on the rack 15 feet behind them. Ack! It's not there! Was it stolen? Or just pushed back out of view?? Ohgodohgodohgod, you say to yourself as you flatten yourself against the seat and cram yourself past the only giant butt in France, it's owner still pawing helplessly at her bag while M. H-b-a-n-i-a-h assesses the best way to attack the problem of le giant suitcase. You finally reach the spot and WHEW it is there, it's just been moved a bit. Now, you heft your bag off the rack and it lands with a dull thud, most likely on your foot. You struggle to jockey the bag sideways, so you can get it down the aisle, getting it stuck on at least three things jutting out into your narrow path as you push it along awkwardly in front you. Now it's time to get your bag off the train, and when you pull it down those three exit steps it never seems to land on it's wheels. Inevitably, you end up dragging it along lamely on its side for 4 or 5 yards, desperate to get away from the bustling chaos alongside the tracks. But lo! Just as you think you are free and have begun to right your wayward suitcase and perhaps locate your umbrella, a herd of determined travelers plows by you and you are forced once again to join the fray. Down the escalator the human tide flows (and since this is France, where no one leaves a buffer step between people, everyone seems to be standing waaay too close to you) and you have a moment's repose while you descend into the bowls of the station. Unless of course you are like me and are busily obsessing over what kinds of serious diseases might be covering that black rubber handrail you must hold in order to avoid toppling over your fellow escalator passengers.

Now you've hit bottom! Let's see if you can get your bag off the escalator before the the person standing oh-so close behind you crashes into you with their bag! Likely not. Now surge forward with the masses, until you catch sight of that M, the symbol for Metro. The sea parts several times as people head off toward other platforms. You are part of a giant maze humming along under the train station, like one of so many ants in a colony, unable to to stop lest you get trampled.

There it is, the M! Follow the signs and descend lower, deeper under Paris. This time there is no escalator. That's right, you must either drag you suitcase kuhTHUMP-kuhTHUMP-kuhTHUMP down the stairs or hoist it up into your arms and waddle like a giant, weary, jeans-wearing penguin, hoping to god you don't miss that last step and end up on your face. After more sign-following, you find yourself in the Metro station. While you wait in line to buy a ticket you take a moment and realize you've spent your first 20 minutes in Paris underground.

After you've got your ticket you find a wall map and trace the colored paths with your finger (Oh god! More germs!), making sure to note the last stop of the lines you need, since that will tell you what direction you need to head in. You need to take the 4 heading toward Porte de Clignancourt (or as my mom called it, Klingon Court), and get off at Sebastopol, then take the 3 to Pont de Levallois and get off at Opera. Ok, here we go... and you shove off.

...And then you get stuck in the turnstile. You didn't yet know that it's a good idea to push your bag in ahead of you, so now your bag is clamped between the automatic doors behind you and you yank on it desperately and fruitlessly as the line stacks up behind you and people start tapping their toes. Eventually a nice French man helps you force the doors open and you send him a breathless "Merci beaucoup!" as the masses pull you along toward your next flight of stairs.

KuhTHUMP-kuhTHUMP-kuhTHUMP! No, you're not done yet; you've got two or three more flights at least, snaking further and further down beneath the city.

Finally, you make it to the correct Metro station. You and the other passengers hurry onto the train after it coasts into a stop, the doors flying open with a loud kahCHUNG. Fortunately the metro comes almost constantly in Paris, so you need not wait more than 2-4 minutes. Then you stand in the oddly quiet car and watch the graffiti fly by on the walls outside the windows. If you look ahead of you into the next car you can see it turn before you, taking you with it, hurtling down a pitch black tube like a big metal serpent, and although you are surrounded by people you can hear only the shrill wail of the metal wheels on the track and the whoosh of air as you plunge through another dark tunnel.

Finally you come to your stop and as the train glides to a halt you open the doors, kahCHUNG, and step out just as the car stops moving. People waiting on the platform flow in behind you as you exit, and the train whooshes off once more without you. Take another set of tunnels and perhaps some more stairs to the line to which you intend to transfer and repeat the process. This time there is a dark-skinned man in the car playing a sweet, mournful song on the violin, accompanying the sound of metal on metal as you fly through the maze. After a few minutes he tucks his instrument under his arm and walks through the car with a paper cup, hoping for a few coins as he moves on through to the next car to repeat his performance. Opera comes and kahCHUNG, you exit.

After some more penguin walking and kuhTHUMP-kuhTHUMPing, you emerge onto the streets of Paris. It's bustling, to put it mildly. Throngs of people crisscross in front of you, and around you, even sometimes through you. You back up against a wall to get your bearings, letting the human tide flow past unimpeded. And then you lift your gaze from the sidewalk and out into the city.

The view is staggering. On every block there is at least one magnificent building. Bordeaux has it's share of impressive architecture too believe you me, but Paris takes it to the extreme. Every 45 seconds we passed something that made me stare open-mouthed and wonder, "What IS that? It must be something extremely important." But in Paris, it might just be a post office or a hotel. Though don't get me wrong, Paris also holds a never-ending supply of really vital government buildings and historically fascinating monuments. I'm convinced it would impossible to know something about all of them. I felt like that obnoxiously inquisitive 6-year-old everyone has been forced to converse with at least once in their life: what's that? And that? And that? Why is it there? Who put it there? What does it do? What is it for? How long has it been there? I couldn't even bring myself to take that many pictures in Paris because the task seemed too daunting; I didn't even know where to start.

Anyway, from the Opera metro station, we walked to our hotel, which fortunately, was not hard to find. And we passed a Brioche Doree on the way there, so we knew where our next stop would be (the pastry content in my blood was getting dangerously low). We stayed at the Peletier-Haussmann-Opera Hotel, which was recommended to me by an English teacher at my lycee. A word of advice: if you're going to Paris, get a hotel recommendation from someone whose standards you trust, and be prepared to spend a little more money than you normally would. And be prepared for small. Really small. Paris is one of the world's most popular destinations, so hotels feel free to pack 'em in and charge 'em accordingly. Our hotel was quite good, even if the price made my frugal heart ache a little. The concierge was a friendly, cheerful Frenchman who spoke English with a combination British/French accent. He warned us that the hotel has "a very small lift" and we said, oh yes, the hotel we've just come from in Bordeaux did too, ha ha, yes we're old salts at this. But no. This was really more like dumbwaiter than an elevator. I got my (carry-on-sized) suitcase in there and didn't see any room for myself. Monsieur Le Desk Guy came over and helped me lean the bag in such a way that I could shimmy in in front of it and lean forward over it so he could get the door closed. Needless to say we had to go one at a time.

I opened the door to our room and even I, who has stayed in Paris before and so expected little space, drew my breath in sharply. There were two twin beds pushed together and about 10 inches of space around them on all sides, then four walls. Oh and two microscopic bedside tables and a wall-mounted plasma TV. That's it. My heart missed a beat when I saw no other door in the room, and I began to panic. We did get a bathroom, right?? Fortunately I closed the entry door and realized the bathroom door was just behind where it had opened up against the wall. Whew. Other than the extreme lack of space, the room was nicely furnished, clean, functional, and smelled pleasantly like nothing.

The only other notable thing about our hotel room is that it contained what I guessed might be some kind of transistor radio from the 1950s, I wondered briefly if this hotel might have once harbored communists. In any case, it and our shiny new plasma TV made an odd couple.

We left the hotel in search of baked goods, and this was the moment I realized I'd left my umbrella back at Gare Saint Jean in Bordeaux. Oops. We found a Monoprix and I bought the first of three umbrellas we would buy and lose or break over the next 9 days. After munching on flaky, buttery almond croissants and sipping hot English Breakfast tea, we strolled down to the Seine (for anyone who may not know this, that's the big river that runs through Paris... I'm probably insulting your intelligence here, but just to make sure) and along the water, past Notre Dame and across a bridge and down into the Latin Quarter. The Latin Quarter is fun and lively. Historically it's where Paris' great minds whiled away their time discussing philosophy and politics. It's near the Sorbonne, Paris' big university, and so back in the day the students who inhabited the area spoke Latin (the then-language-of-academia). Hence, Latin Quarter. Nowadays parts of it are still teaming with modern-day students, but it also houses tons of flashy touristy shops and cheap, immigrant-run eateries featuring Mediterranean fare and the shards of dozens of broken plates. For some reason, plate-throwing is a tradition here. I don't really know why. If you do, please fill me in.

This area also contains a scary-looking church covered in the world's creepiest gargoyles. It's called Saint Severin and I took lots of pictures of it. Can you imagine being a 4 year-old kid back in the middle ages going to church on Sunday and being faced with hundreds of deformed demon heads jutting out at you ("Mom, I don't want to go to church; it'll give me nightmares!")? Yeesh.

Later on, we had dinner at some big restaurant down there that was rather unimpressive. I think I had some kind of salad. It was not remarkable. Mostly I am so blasee about this meal because our waiter had the world's biggest stick up his butt. I'm just sayin', if you don't like tourists, maybe you shouldn't be a waiter in Paris. In case you haven't noticed, it's kind of a popular place. People like that guy irritate me so much because they are what give Parisians and French people in general their reputation of being brusque and snobby. Promise me, people; if you go to Paris, visit some places that are not big and touristy and you're bound to meet some really friendly, helpful, and genuine people. Don't forget to say "Bonjour madame/monsieur" when you walk in, though. That's very important here.

In spite of Monsieur Les Crabby-Pants, it was nice to sit and have a glass of wine in Paris. Afterwards we walked around some more, admiring the City of Lights and it's most sparkly. We took the metro home and got ready for bed, preparing ourselves for the busy day ahead of us.

Our busy day started in Montmartre. If you happen to be even half the "Amelie" buff I am, you'll know that the entire movie was filmed on location in this colorful little section of Northern Paris. I've seen "Amelie" about 500 times so I had spent the last year lamenting the fact that I didn't make it up there during my first, extremely abbreviated trip to Paris. Needless to say, I made sure that Montmartre was a top priority this time around.

Historically, Montmartre was the somewhat seedy, bohemian-artistic, racy nightlife mecca of Paris. It is home to the famous Moulin Rouge and was frequented by such Paris notables as Toulouse Lautrec. Now parts of it are full of junky cheap tourist trinkets and crepe stands, but still, it is definitely worth seeing. It's a fresh look at the not-so-posh side of Paris, and if you travel just a few blocks from the main tourist sights you will find a real city where real people actually live.

We spent most of our time at and around the big beautiful church at the top of the hill, Basilique du Sacre-Coeur. The park that surrounds it is where an important scene in "Amelie" was filmed; the one where Amelie rides the ghost train and leaves a complicated message for Nino.

And, as it started to drizzle, I ate my first Parisian crepe in over a year. It was not-so-delicately crafted by a mannish-looking Frenchwoman with zero personality. She slopped batter on the stone and scowled as the crepe sizzled and steamed in the crisp October air, and then flopped it over on the other side and unceremoniously dumped on some sugar. Then, this is the best part, she opened a drawer under the counter and grabbed a grubby-looking lemon half (with the same hand she'd been using to gruffly take customers' money) and scrutinized it for a moment. She must have decided it wasn't good enough because she flung it back in the drawer (apparently it wasn't bad enough to throw away, though) and got a new lemon from a pile nearby. Thank god; I wanted no part of that first scuzzy lemon. She mashed the new lemon in her not-at-all gentle grip and dowsed my crepe with it's juice. She slapped the crepe together, threw it into some paper and handed it to me with a grunt. Oh, but it was delicious. So delicious in its hot, sweet, syrupy, lemony-ness that I didn't notice at first that I had let a waterfall of sticky sweet goo dribble down the entirety of my knee-length raincoat and onto the toe of my shoe. I'm really glad I wore that instead of my wool coat that day.

After Montmartre, we took the metro back to the Seine and got in line at the Musee D'Orsay (Josh, if you're reading this, yes; I thought of you). It's a 19th century art museum set in what used to be the Orsay Train Station, also constructed in the 19th century (the age of iron and glass). It houses tons of famous Monets, Renoirs, Van Goghs, and others in it's huge impressionist/post-impressionist section. It's also not overly huge (like the Louvre), so it's not quite so daunting, as far as art museums go. But a word to the wise: before you make the trip to Europe and make the multi-hour commitment required to see an art museum like Orsay, or the Louvre, or really any famous art museum at all, do some reading. Don't just walk in and expect to be dazzled. If you know nothing about the art, you just won't care, and it will one big anticlimactic waste of time that'll leave you with numb eyes and aching feet. I know that the prospect of reading about a bunch of old paintings and sculptures doesn't exactly sound enticing to some of you, but trust me, you won't regret it. Pick something light and easy that is intended for an everyday person. I read Europe 101 by Rick Steves, and it made a huge difference. Europe 101 is a very general overview of European history and trends in European art over the centuries, from cave paintings through today. It's easy to read and even funny, and the things I saw in Italy and Paris wouldn't have meant half as much to me without it. Think of it this way: imagine a person tells you a 2 minute story about their day. If you don't know this person at all, it's likely that their story will be wholly uninteresting to you. If you know the person even just a little bit, you care about what happens to them that much more. A bland bit of small talk could become juicy gossip with just a little bit of background knowledge. The point is, know your art.

After Orsay, we took the metro down to L'Arch de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees. This is another sight I missed on my first trip to Paris (I remind you that the trip in it's entirety lasted less than 24 hours). By this time it was dark, but again, not such a bad thing in the city of light. L'Arch de Triomphe (lark duh tree-UHMF) was built by Napoleon in honor of himself and his many victories. Since then, all war victories made on French soil by the party in power (including Hitler's during WWII) as well as many other national festivities have been celebrated by sending a parade under the arch. I took about 5 million pictures of that too. The Champs Elysees is a long, broad avenue lined with elegant and extravagant shops. It's like Rodeo Drive on steroids. I imagine some people have enough money to shop there. Not I.

Then, we ended our day-long tour of Paris with none other than the Eiffel Tower. As cheesy and touristy and played-out as it might sound, the tower really is impressive. It was built as part of a world's fair in the 19th century by a young architect named Eiffel, and was originally intended to be temporary. But it was such an incredible feat of engineering and the whole world admired it so much, Paris decided to keep it. Apparently, a lot of Parisians thought it was an eyesore at the time. Right now they've got it all lit up in blue and decorated with the circle of stars from the European Union's flag, commemorating the Union's 10th birthday.

We had dinner (another not particularly noteworthy cafe) and took the metro back to the hotel to prepare for our morning flight to Florence. We'll be back in Paris in a few days to catch the Louvre, Notre Dame, and Sainte Chappelle.

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Here ends part II! I hope you're still reading. Miss you all, and see some of you in just over a month for Christmas!

Des bises,

-Lisa

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Photos

Calling the Commies
from our hotel room. What is this thing??

The Latin Quarter
No, I have no idea who those girls are, they just ended up in my picture.

Saint Severin
In the Latin Quarter

RAWR!
One of many creepy gargoyles on Saint Severin.

The Louvre
and it's controversial glass pyramid entrance.

Pont Neuf, maybe?
I can't remember. It would make sense that I would take a picture of Pont Neuf, it's kind of famous. But there are lots of bridges crossing the Seine, so I can't be sure.

Sacre-Coeur
when the weather was still nice. This is where Amelie's mother lights candles to pray for a son :). The inside is familiar (and cool) too but I couldn't take pics.

View of Paris
from Sacre-Coeur

Another view of Paris
from Sacre-Coeur. Amelie fans: recognize the paths??

The park surrounding Sacre-Coeur
I'm silently dribbling lemon crepe goo on myself as I take this. I will discover it moments later.

Waiting outside the Musee d'Orsay
That's some swell 19th century iron and glass, isn't it?? I think so.

Inside the Musee d'Orsay
No art pics allowed, sorry.

L'Arch de Triomphe
A close-up shot, and one of many.

"Happy 10th Birthday, E.U."
says the Eiffel Tower.