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Published: October 2nd 2009
Notre Dame
This is just the top half!Paris...I am impressed! We rented an apartment in Paris, so we are living amongst the Parisans and living as they do. So we go to the boulangerie every morning for a fresh, warm baguette or crosissants and in the evening for bread for our meal, and at lunch to eat with our meat and cheese. In the neighbourhoods, you will find boulangeries, boucheries (meat shops), fromageries (cheese shops), and many convenience stores (i.e. gas bar booth size) with fruits, veggies, and the necessary daily food items (including a large selection of wines...of course). It can be quite the walk around to find the only large (i.e. 7-11 size) marche that serves a neighborhood and is the Paris version of a supermarket that carries all food items at a much more reasonable cost than the convenience stores. However, many times we find ourselves stopping at the convenience store, boulangerie, and whatever other store we had to to get the ingredients we needed for dinner...as we still have not found a large market in our neighborhood.
For those who count carbs and calories...do not fret for us because we are in the land of skinny! (you know when I asked you to
Notre Dame Inside
This is just the main mass area...by no means does it capture everything about Notre Dame! picture me 15 pounds lighter...better make that 25!) We are on the subway everyday and are hard pressed to find an overweight individual and I suspect it would be the same for this City of 2.5 million and region of 12 million people! I do not know why, with all the bread, cheese and wine. Even Nadine says she needs to go on a diet! No wonder Paris is seen as the fashion capital...everyone is supermodel size!
Living amongst the Parisians is very comfortable. The diversity amongst its population is incredible... anyone can fit into Paris. The francopohones in my travelling group (Nadine, Alex, Gabriel, and Nicolas) are finding it difficult to communicate with the Parisians. It is difficult for the kids to understand the parisian dialect, simply because they do not have enough french experience yet. The parisians are having difficulty understanding Nadine and the kids and Nadine has had to adjust the manner in which she speaks, so that they can understand her. For me they recognize that I do not speak french and switch to a broken, choppy english to accommodate me. I am disappointed that their choppy, broken English is better to communcate with me
Notre Dame Gargoyle
There are hundreds of these things all over the church...and all are different. They play a role when it rains to channel the water away from the building. than my french. I have a lot of work to do!
We live in a neighborhood a few blocks from the Sacre Coeur church, which is one of the significant monuments in Paris and was the first place we visited after arriving at the apartment and having a nap to make up for the sleeplessness on the red eye from Montreal. We have walked in a lot of the neighborhoods of Paris, beyond the tourist areas of the historical spots we visited, as we search for our lunch fare. I find the neighborhoods incredibly interesting! All of their needs are serviced by little independent businesses for food, restaurants, clothing, furniture, and everything else. There is little need for an automobile...now one of those scooters would be neat! They are everywhere...which is ironic seeing as traffic is dangerous here. I read a tourist magazine about Paris and they do not recommend tourists driving here...it took me 5 minutes to see that! Of course, there are few cars bigger than a VW jetta...which is good, because not much more can fit on these very narrow streets, filled with people, kids, dogs, cars, buses, and lots of scooters. Most of the cars
Waiting in line at Notre Dame
waitingfor our turn to climb the 400 steps to the bell tower. are little 2 seaters or 4 seaters that are really only 2 seaters anyway.
While there are some wonderful parks throughout Paris...you will not find any grass in the neighborhoods. It is just sidewalk, road, buildings. Normally, this is okay...but when combined with dogs that crap on the sidewalk, grass to wipe your shoes on becomes very important. The sidewalks and streets were not as clean as I was expecting. In all fairness though, they were cleaner in the tourist areas. The city is engaged in a communication strategy to get people to act properly by picking up after their dogs, getting the people to use the public toilets (which cost money), picking up trash (there is a lack of garbage bins), and other habits they would like to break. We did get stuck behind the sidewalk washer the other day. A big water truck (takes up the entire road) slowly drives up the road while a worker carries a large hose connected to the truck and does a high pressure wash of the sidewalk. Freshens everything up like a spring rain!
I do not imagine there are too many families larger than two kids living in Paris.
Lunch stop
Us and the pigeons...not sure if the sames ones followed us everywhere or if these are different ones? Not only because of the limit to the size of your car but also to the size of your living quarters and the cost for such. Paris is an expensive city! We were told by someone who used to live here, with 2 small children at the time, that a small one bedroom, old apartment where the kids slept in the bedroom and the parents in the living room was $1,400 euros ($2,300 CAD) per month. We never saw anything like a single family home or even townhomes during our walkabouts in the four corners of Paris (the city is actually round). We started to see some single family attached residences when we got out of the City limits into the burbs when we visited the Palace of Versailles. Even the little neighborhood cafes charge $6 euros for a beer or glass of wine and $11 euros for a simple sandwich. Very expensive!
We have visited the Louvre...which is huge and may be the largest museum in the world! The literature indicates that the Louvre is the world's oldest museum. Unfortunately there is not much to see...except the Mona Lisa, other da Vincis, the venus di milo sculpture, and
Arc de Triumph
Napoleon erected this to commemorate famous French battles and it is now the formal starting points for parades of importance. hundreds and hundreds of years of historical art and artifacts! To see the entire place would take two entire days! Instead...we went until the kids couldn't stand anymore, then we treated ourselves to a Paris cafe to watch the people and enjoy croque monsieurs.
After dinner we went to the top of the Eiffel tower at night and saw the city of light. It was like an amusement ride...45 minutes of waiting and 1 minute of ride 😊. It was great to see Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower! Something you have to do. Like having a chocolat crepe from a street vendor...which we did today! Of course...chocolat here is different and much different from the milk chocolate the kids like (geez maybe we will break them of liking chocolate!)
We went to Notre Dame, palace of Versailles, arc de triumph, and more sites that I will let the pictures show you about. Notre Dame being the setting for the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the arc de triumph the site of the tomb of the unknown soldier, and Versailles where the Peace Treaty after WW1 was signed. We had wanted to rent-a-car and go to Normandy
and Dieppe for a WW2 education tour, but when the price tag to rent the car and drive there for the day started to hit $300 euros, we elected instead to go to the world's largest war museum. The added bonus is that we also visited Napoleon's tomb. At the places we have visited, I have acquired information about Napoleon, and am now very confused! There was Naploeons I, II, and III, and I am not sure which one was Bonaparte. I also read that he was a general in the Italian Army and the King of Italy and I know Bonaparte appointed his brother as King of Spain at one point as well????? I am going to have to sort this out if I am ever going to sleep again!
Before we went to the War museum...we stopped at the Orsay art museum. While we saw some impressive art at the Louvre, I asked Nadine...where is all of the art of the famous French artists? Most, if not all, are housed in the Orsay. So I walked through large rooms filled with original paintings by Van Gogh (I thought he was Dutch), Claude Monet, Renoire, Cizanne, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec,
The Louvre
It does not all fit into the picture...even at this distance. Degas, Gauguin and many more. Nadine and the kids could not understand why I was excited about being an arms length away from the original Whistler's Mother! Hopefully someone out there can relate. Sorry...I forgot the camera for that visit...so no pictures. But it was incredibly impressive to see these works.
On Thursday this week, Nadine visited with a friend (Gwen) she hasn't seen in over 20 years. She travelled via high speed train about 1.5 hours outside of Paris. They were best friends in Tunisia when they lived there as 14 year olds. She had a great time reminiscing and getting caught up. While Nadine was visiting, I tried to take the kids to a swimming pool...we arrived at the municipal pool and were told that bathing caps were 'obligitoire'! Fine...we can do that, so we went to their store to buy bathing caps and noticed a sign that displayed the international sign for NO (red circle w/ line through it) on a pair of knee length shorts. So in my fluent french I pointed at Alex's bathing suit and asked if they were okay...apparently they are not! As it was explained to us, in rather arrogant french,
they require an adequate bathing suit for their indoor pools. The french definition of an adequate bathing suit??? A speedo! They required us to wear a speedo in their public pools! When I suggested buying a speedo to the boys they laughed and turned for home. (if a speedo is part of equation...you better sharpen your imagination and make my 30 pounds lighter!) So no swimming for us...hopefully the speedo craze isn't everywhere in Europe! If they had normal sized people...they would get away from speedos pretty quick I would think!
An amazing observation in Paris is that there is a very high percentage of smokers. And it seems to be in vogue! Now I know in a previous post I made light of the 60's being over...however, I digress. Twiggy sizes everywhere, smoking in vogue, and speedos as the required swim wear...I think the 60's are alive and well...not that there is anything wrong with that!
Things you will rarely see in Paris:
- a to go cup of coffee (not one anywhere!)
- someone carrying a cup of coffee down the street
- Tim's...saw a Starbucks, but was afraid to see the price of coffee!
-
Venus di Milo
Boys...what did you do with her arms!!!! grass in the neighborhoods
- a pick-up truck
- something that Napoleon did not influence
Well...we are saying farewell to Paris tomorrow and hello to Barcelona! We very much enjoyed Paris...it's similarities and differences with our own ways. The history and the diversity are fantastic. But I would have to rate it as too rich for my blood (although I would love to obtain some salary information for various professions).
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Leigh Smythe
non-member comment
Paris is fabulous!
Sounds like you had a wonderful immersion in Paris culture. When Danielle lived there she concluded that the reason all the woman are so thin is because they smoke! Not a good reason to start! Looks like you are having a great adventure so far!