Paris

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The end of the school year in the UK came about in the second to last week of July. This meant that Emma was out of work, and with me already playing the part of unemployed bum, it meant that we had a lot of free time on our hands. It also meant that we no longer had any income, so our dreams of a two month long road trip around Europe, finishing at Oktoberfest in Munich, could no longer be realised. Instead we had to make dramatic revisions to our plans, and cut out all but the absolute must sees to do on this trip, leaving everything else for another trip in the not too distant future. So what we had left at the end of it was 3 nights in Paris, 3 Venice and an 11 day road trip around England. This blog recounts the first leg of the trip, the three nights in Paris.

I must confess that Paris was not a place that was very high on my ‘Places to visit’ list. Everybody romanticises the place and I’m just not into that whole lovey dovey, city of romance bullshit where everybody is drop dead gorgeous, the blokes are good lovers (I’m especially not into that aspect) and they all walk around eating baguettes and croissants, drinking wine, speaking there supposedly ‘sexy’ language, and just generally being big wankers (its fair to say I’m not a great fan of the French. We’ve had bad experiences with French flatmates, and I am still harbouring a grudge from Rugby World Cups 1999 and 2007, not to mention the loss at Carisbrook this year.) So I wasn’t particularly excited about going to Paris. It was somewhere I did want to go, but there were plenty of places I would have liked to have visited first. Emma on the other hand has fallen for the romanticised version of Paris that shes seen in all the movies and in books etc, and she had been dreaming of going there since she was a little girl. So before we left NZ in March her parents insisted we go there, and out of concern for my personal safety if we arrived back into Dunedin in August without having been to Paris, I agreed that we should pop over the Channel for a visit.

The last week of school rolled around and Emma finished up her last two days of relieving work. We had a couple of days to pack up our flat and sort all our stuff out as the day that we left for Paris we would also be leaving our flat. I was excited on the day of our departure, not so much because we were going to Paris, but more because we were finally going away on our last wee trip before we went home, and we were effectively saying goodbye to London. It also made me happy to see how excited Emma was to finally be going to Paris. The journey began early in the morning. We had to be on the move by 7:30am in order to give ourselves enough time to catch the tube to Victoria Station where we would catch the 8:30am bus to London Luton, so we could be there early enough to check in for our 11:30am flight. By the time we touched down at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and caught the train and the Metro to our hotel, we had been on the go for 7 or 8 hours and were already feeling a little fatigued. But with so much to see in the little time we had in Paris we had no time to sit down and relax, and instead headed straight out into the clearing weather to start our sightseeing. The first stop on the list was Galeries Lafayette, an awesome department store with a most impressive glass domed roof. It was in this department store that we came across our first Parisian McDonald’s, and having not eaten since about 6am we decided we’d tryout French McDonald’s, not so much for the wholesome nutritious food they serve, but more for the fact that they serve beer. Delicious Kronenbourg beer. And it was great.

After our beer and burgers we headed out into the streets and made our way in the general direction of the River Seine. After passing the Opera House and the Madeline Church we soon found ourselves in Place de La Concorde in the middle of the Champs-Elysee surrounded on all sides by seemingly chaotic Parisian traffic. It was in the middle of this madness that we caught our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, and it was pretty impressive. It was very much the realisation of a dream for Emma, to be in Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower.

From Place de La Concorde we headed through the Jardin des Tuileries to the Louvre. We hadn’t originally intended on going into the Louvre until later on in the trip, but whilst outside the glass pyramid taking photos we realised that there weren’t too many people out for a Friday evenings art viewing. As the museum was still going to be open for another few hours we figured we’d have plenty of time to have a quick look around without all the crowds, meaning we could cross this one off the list and free up some time later in the trip. We’re not big art lovers Emma and I, so we decided to concentrate our visit on the two main attractions of the museum, the Venus de Milo, and of course the World’s most famous artwork, the Mona Lisa. The Venus de Mile looked just like any other sculpture to me, but the story of its discovery in the ruins of the ancient city of Milo in the Aegean was certainly very interesting. The Mona Lisa was the Mona Lisa, although I had never realised how crazily detailed it is, not that we could actually get close enough to see the detail. And it was bigger than I thought. We’d been told by lots of people that they had found it smaller than they had expected, so I guess we were expecting it to be quite small, but it was about as big as I had originally thought. We had a look around a lot of the other paintings and sculptures, and I must admit that a lot of the stories and explanations that accompanied the works themselves were very interesting.

After a couple of hours of steering intently at old paintings the old eyes were starting to feel a little strained so we left the museum and made our way up the Champs-Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe. We crossed into the middle of the round about and had a close up look at the Arc and then sat and watched the traffic for half an hour or so as the sun went down, waiting for the lights to come on. I still don’t know how in that 30mins or so we didn’t see any accidents, although there were plenty of near misses. While there is an apparently loose system of give way rules for navigating the round about, it really doesn’t look like there is much order to it. Its very entertaining to watch for a while. The sun soon set and the lights lit up the Arc providing us with some nice night time photos before deciding to call it a day and heading back to our hotel.

The next morning we decided we’d try to get the Eiffel Tour out of the way early in an attempt to beat the crowds, so after a quick breakfast of fresh croissants we caught the Metro to the Tower only to find massive queues already building at the base. We joined the back of the line and about an hour later we’d finally got our tickets and were in the elevator on our way up. We got off the elevator at the first stop a little way up the tower and had a look a round, then got back in the queue to get back on the lift to go right to the top. We got to the top and spent 30mins or so taking in the spectacular views from the top. Its definitely worthwhile doing, but why anyone would propose up there is beyond me. Its not exactly romantic with the hundreds of tourists milling round. After queuing again to get the lift down to the bottom we walked through the nearby park to take some photos. We were at the Tower for over 3 hours, approximately 2 ½ hours of which was spent queuing, but it was well worth it.

After the tower we walked to the Hotel des Invalide, a military museum and veterans home where Napolean is buried, then carried on into the main shopping area on the Champs-Elysee for a spot of lunch. After lunch we caught the Metro to the neighbourhood of St Germain and had a pleasant stroll around the shops etc before having a look inside the Notre Dame Cathedral, which was very impressive, particularly when you consider how old it is, although again it was very touristy.

From Notre Dame we caught the metro north to Montmartre and walked up the hill to the Basilica Sacre Cour. There we had a look inside the church then sat outside on the steps with the hundreds of other people enjoying the sun, music and grand views of the city below. Behind the church we found several quaint little medieval streets that were thronging with tourists enjoying the local bars and restaurants and the myriad of artists and all their work that was on display. We walked back down the hill and were accosted by some loser trying to make us take his crappy piece of friendship bracelet thingee, even at one point grabbing both of us by the arm so we’d stop and take it. After fighting him off we made our way along the seedy Avenue Cliché with all its strip clubs and sex shops and found the Moulin Rouge theatre. It was good for a photo but not much else due to the extremely high ticket prices for performances. So instead we had dinner at a pub next door before we headed back to the Eiffel Tower to catch a very pleasant Twilight Cruise along the Seine. By the time we returned from the river cruise it was dark so we had a walk around the Eiffel Tower to get some photos of it all lit up at night. Unfortunately the photos taken on our crappy little camera didn’t really do it justice. By that stage we were pretty knackered after a busy day so we headed back to the hotel for another good nights sleep.

Next morning after another croissant breakfast we jumped on a train and headed out to Versailles on the southwestern outskirts of Greater Paris. Versailles is the location of the Palace of Versaille, the centre of political power in France from 1682 when Louis XIV moved there from Paris, until 1789 when the during the French Revolution the royal family was forced to move back to Paris. It was also where the Treaty of Versailles was signed at the end of WWI. Being short of time and money we decided to avoid the crowds and expense of going through the actual Palace and instead decided to just have a look around the gardens, which themselves are quite spectacular and worthy of spending a few hours of wandering around enjoying the various gardens and fountains (which only come on two times a day). Classic music is played throughout the whole garden and in association with the fountains its meant to be quite a spectacular display, which indeed it is, but having seen the fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas its hard to rate them particularly highly, although considering how old they are I guess they are quite amazing all the same.

After the Palace visit we jumped on the train and headed back to the centre of Paris where we were hoping to find a spot to watch the closing stage of Le Tour de France along the Champs-Elysee. We managed to squeeze ourselves in to a spot along the barrier in amongst the 300,000 odd spectators and waited for an hour or so for the parade that precedes the actual cycling. As far as parades go it was actually pretty good. In fact it was probably the best (maybe second behind St Paddy’s) I’ve seen. The quality of the floats, paraders and choreography was actually pretty good, although like the St Paddy’s Day parade it was a little long. The parade was marred a little by the pushy Pommy woman beside us. She had been waiting on a bench back from the street for about as long as we had been waiting on our feet up by the barrier. When the parade started she pushed her way up to us at the front of the barrier and asked if I could let her in to take a photo. Thinking it would only be one photo I took a step back and let her in, but of course she had no intention of leaving again. No big deal. I could still sort of see, it just meant I didn’t have a barrier to lean on anymore. But I wasn’t impressed with the way she’d lied to get me to move and then taken advantage of my niceness. A little later on Emma turned to speak to me (because now that I was behind her we couldn’t talk very easily) and then turned back. In doing so she lightly brushed the arm of the old English hag, no more so than what you would expect when you’re in a crowd of 300,000 people standing shoulder to shoulder. At this vicious assault the old hag turned and glared at Emma, who turned to her and returned the glare with a pleasant smile.
‘Can I help you?’ Emma asked politely.
‘You need to stop bumping into me’ the old hag replied.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to’ Emma apologised (half heartedly).
‘Well you need to apologise’ the old hag demanded, ignoring the fact that Emma had just said sorry.
‘Its not like I did it on purpose’ Emma retorted, now getting a little annoyed at the rudeness of the old hag.
‘Well you need to say sorry’ demanded the old hag again.
‘You just need to calm down a bit’ Emma responded with her best patronizing teacher tone.
‘Excuse me?’ the old hag inquired.
‘You just need to calm down a bit’ Emma repeated.
‘Well I’ve been around a lot longer than you and I’ve dealt with plenty of people like you sweetheart, you need to show some respect’ threatened the woman.

In a remarkable display of poise and grace Emma decided it wasn’t worth continuing the verbal stoush and making a scene in front of the massive crowd and turned back to the parade, firing off a sarcastic smile at the old hag and again lightly brushing her arm in defiance. We held our ground and eventually the old hag buggered off. The cyclists eventually arrived and were gone again almost as quick as they came. Luckily though they do about 6 laps of the Champs-Elysee so we did actually get to see quite a bit of them, and man are they fast. There are about 100 vehicles that follow on behind the cyclists, and they were fair honking along to try and keep up with them. We didn’t see the very end, and I still to this day don’t know who won, but nobody really cares. The only important thing is where Lance Armstrongs finished, which ended up being third I think).

After the race we headed up to La Defense. La Defense is the more modern part of the city with sky scrapers filled with flash apartments and the HQ offices of lots of French companies. It’s a bit like Canary Wharf in London, but without the water. There are also a number of sculptures and fountains etc scattered throughout the interesting architecture, including the hideous Grande Arch. We decided to chill out there for a bit on the side of one of the fountains and then took the Metro back across town to St Germain where we bought some Kronenbourgs and baguettes to enjoy on the banks of the Seine with the hundreds over other wine drinking, cheese eating locals. It’s quite a popular thing to do on a nice long summers evening and there is quite a pleasant chilled out vibe to it all. As the sun set we walked along the river and up to the Louvre to take some night photos of the glass pyramid before heading back to our hotel. It was a very relaxing last evening in Paris after all the crowds and tourists we’d encountered in the past two days.

Next day we were due to fly out to Venice but that wasn’t until mid afternoon so to kill some time we decided to climb the towers of the Notre Dame Cathedral. After a couple of hours in the queue we eventually squeezed our way up the spiral staircase to the gargoyles at the top, and got some good shots of the city. We also saw the bell that the Hunchback of Notre Dame rang. Unfortunately though, Quasimodo wasn’t available for photos. At the top it had started to piss down so we headed back down and had one last French meal of Turkish kebabs before catching the bus out to the airport.

So I wasn’t that excited about Paris and my expectations weren’t really high, but in the end I did really enjoy it. I think it is a beautiful city with plenty of interesting history, and I did find it pretty chilled out in places. But I fear that when I look back on the trip I’m likely to remember the masses of tourists and the commercialisation of it all more than I am the interesting buildings and history etc. I guess that’s what you get when you visit it during the height of the tourist season. I definitely wouldn’t go back there at the same time again. Of course Emma really loved it though. It was the realisation of one of her childhood dreams and will go down as one of her favourite places visited. Bring on Venice.

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Photos

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Galaries Lafayette - a cool department store with an amazing glass dome roof

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Galaries Lafayette

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Galaries Lafayette

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Back of the Palais Garnier - Paris Opera

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Palais Garnier

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L'église de la Madeleine - Madeleine Church

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Place de la Concorde

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Cleopatra's Needle and Hittorf's Fountain - Place de la Concorde

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First sighting of the Eiffel Tower

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Jardin des Tuileries looking towards the Louvre

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Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel infront of the Louvre

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The Louvre

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Emma holding the Pyramide du Louvre in her pincers

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Gaz in front of the glass pyramid

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Inside the Louvre

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Venus de Milo

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The crowds around the Mona Lisa

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The world's most famous painting

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Emma infront of the painting

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Gaz doing his best Mona Lisa smile

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A massive painting