Chillin in Paris

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I woke up to find that it had rained last night and it was still at a slight drizzle so I bundled up and headed for the main city area of Paris. I was annoyed because there was so much traffic but I soon got over that when I saw the French motorcyclists riding like madmen and proceeded to follow suit. I arrived at my destination just about when I was planning on and that is always a nice way to start the day. I had come across a company that offers free walking tours of Paris and its just tip based so you give what you feel like and they have six tours and I found the timing was almost perfect for me to walk from one to the next. So the first met in front of the opera house and I walked there and found the guide and a few other travelers out for the day. The tour began and we walked all over the place and the guide was from the area and she knew the cool things to see and pointed them out to all us. Like there is an artist who goes around and puts up small space invaders in exact places around the world and when you look on the website it shows all the locations around the world that he has put up, it was pretty cool. I came across several others in various other countries and it was a cool thing to see. Of course it was illegal so he had to do it at night and super-fast as to not get caught. Apparently the cops attempted to remove it with no luck and now the Parisians like that it is there so it stays. Also I learned a few of the different styles of buildings naturally I don’t remember the names of them but whatever. One style was an attempt to bring nature back into the city as to remind people of nature and the forests and whatnot. So the windows and doors are all wood and have flowing seemingly random waviness and lines just like trees and vines just do as they please. Another style was a very popular one and I even saw it in other countries it was so popular. Basically you have the shops on the ground floor, the shopkeepers storage area on the first floor (which is like a half floor), then you have three more floors for living spaces to let out. Now it never crossed my mind until it was told to me but the top floor was reserved for the very poor and the more you could afford the lower you lived. It took a minute to click why but then it hit me because there were only stairs and the rich weren’t going to walk up three flights of stairs only the poor would be willing to do that. Then we walked to the rich part of town, apparently on French monopoly games where we have the boardwalk and park place they have this street because of all the riches. I did some serious window shopping though naturally because they were all stores where you don’t ask prices they are just that high. At the end of the street there was the Ritz hotel which had recently been denied its palace rating and that was a huge deal to them to not get this so it was being entirely redone. If I would have stayed another 2 days they were having an auction of all the stuff they were getting rid of which is still super nice because it’s a Ritz. Then we came to the gardens, and I had to use my imagination because there was no green everything was still in winter mode because the saying is that it is not early April its February 58^th. But I could see how nice the place would look in spring and it would be quite the sight to see I tell you that. But this was the end of the tour so I got my bearing and set off to my next walking tour.

The next tour was only about 1 mile away and I had plenty of time to get there so I stopped at a corner shop and grabbed something from the window to eat. Well I found out it was a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, but the cheese was on top instead of inside and they just throw it in the oven to cook it off. It was pretty good and only cost like €3 so I was pleased with my lunch choice.

I got to the next tour start point before the guide so I just took a seat and enjoyed the view. It was a tour of the Notre Dame Cathedral area and as I looked around I knew it was going to be pretty cool. When the guide showed up he noticed my motorcycle helmet, (you have to carry it with you or secure it in some way, unlike the sates where I leave my helmet on my bike at all time in all places) and told me that there is a nice collection of bikes along the tour route that I will probably enjoy so I was pretty intrigued. We learned that there is a marking on the ground outside the chapel and it marks the center of Paris and back in the day, (not that long ago really) all signs were distance from Paris, and the guide lived literally one hundred feet away from this so to him as a kid when they traveled the signs said X km to home and we can all see how cool this would be when you are far from your home. Then we went to learn what made Notre Dame so important. And if you look at the church you can just see that it is cool and back in the day the people wanted to learn about God but they couldn’t read, and all the sermons were given in Latin which most didn’t speak. So they had to find a way to teach about God to the masses so they built Notre Dame as a giant comic book so to speak. The entire building is statues and stories behind the statues. Like under the front doors there is a basic good and evil depiction with angels and daemons and you can really see that if you know nothing about the bible that you can really learn something about it just from a bunch of statues. Above everything there is more statues of all the kings of the Bible, but during the French revolution they were kings so they lost their heads. Years later a guy was commissioned to fix everything that was messed up from the revolution and he found some way to get his face on one of the king’s heads, and again at the top of the church he is depicted as doubting Thomas. As we went around the building the motorcycles were pointed out. Basically the police park their bikes and get on their work bikes and go do their job so there was about twenty or so bikes all sitting there looking pretty almost like a show lot or something it was pretty cool, but since there were so many cops around I decided against taking pictures of the scene. We continued around the church to the back and I saw the flying buttresses, I didn’t know what they were I call them decoration poles. But apparently normally at the time flying buttresses were strong big and ugly but these were small and decorative, it was the first of its kind and people were amazed by them. The thought is that Notre Dame isn’t a church at all but an ark and when final judgment comes it will float away and those lucky enough to be inside will skip judgment and go straight to heaven, because something like this couldn’t be built by man it was just too beautiful and perfect. The tour ended shortly after and they give coupons for discounted boat tours so I decided heck why not sounds fun and headed off.

I wandered to the boat tour place and missed the tour by like 30 seconds but it was ok I only had to sit and wait for about fifteen minutes. The boat came and I scored a good seat on the top deck for a better view. We took off and headed down the river and they explained all the interisting facts about tje bridges we went under. Like there is a few of them with a big N on the pillars, those were made while Napoleon was in charge. Others had some really cool statues and awesome design details. Another has collapsed seven times in the last hundred years. I saw the miniture statue of liberty, that makes two of the three I have now seen. Somehow the one in New York has still escaped me. The boat turned around and we headed back. We slowed at the Eiffel tower so everyone could marvel at it for a while. And Headed back to the start of the tour, it wasn’t bad but if I had paid full price for it I would have been annoyed. But I didn’t so I can’t complain about it. That night I went out to a pub nearby my hotel and had some good beers. Naturally I have no idea what they were but there were pretty good.

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Photos

Notre Dame
Awesome looking old church, seriously must visit sometime.

Center
This is the center of Paris right here

Notre Dame
This is right above the main entryway and it tells such a tale.

Charlemagne
This is a pretty cool statue of Charlemagne.

Napoleon monument
Napoleon had this monument made with the cannons and other stuff from the losers of a battle. At the top he has himself in his had looking at each other.