I have just returned from my first trip to Paris. 3 days, 2 nights – lovely, but I could easily spend at least a year there, and that would be just to eat my way through every patisserie and boulangerie.
We set off early on a cold Tuesday morning to Birmingham New Street station to get down to Euston, and from there to St. Pancras to get the Eurostar. The train was very trainlike. I don’t know why but I’d imagined it might be a little more flash than it was, but then again, the Eurostar is not exactly new anymore. It was certainly comfortable enough though and we reached Paris in a little over 2 hours, arriving around lunchtime. First thought on surveying Gare du Nord: French people just look French. I don’t know how, but they do.
We took the metro to the area where the hotel is, Hotel du 7eme Art in Le Marais. We were barely on the metro when a guy got on and starting playing the accordion. Such a cliché but that was my first “I’m in Paris!” moment.
Getting off at St. Paul it was obvious that Le Marais is a cool area, lots of funky little shops and tempting patisseries. Our hotel was a really interesting little place, old movie posters all over the place. Lovely staff and when we finally managed to work out how to open the door (extremely difficult, despite three degrees and a masters between the two of us) a very pleasant room. Fantastic French windows which opened onto what was to my imagination an archetypal Parisian street. It probably wouldn’t have passed muster in an American film however – no view of the Eiffel Tower.
We decided to make the most of the day and headed out for a walk. We were ridiculously close to La Seine and, crossing to the Left Bank found a lovely little boulangerie/patisserie where we ordered a sandwich each and I got a truffe au chocolat, and Michael embarked on his tarte au citron love affair. We ate by the river before walking to Notre Dame which was much closer than I’d imagined, and I realised the hotel was really quite central. Perfect. Michael was very interested in the architecture surrounding us and especially in the cathedral, drawing comparisons between English examples such as Durham. He also found much to admire in the doors of Paris and found a few lovely examples to photograph. Having looked at Notre Dame from (nearly) all angles we moved on to explore the Latin Quarter a little more. I really wanted to find a bookshop I’d read about so we went on the hunt, but before getting very far at all managed to get in the middle of a protest march. It wasn’t clear what the protest was about (I’m guessing some political issue) but I was pretty pleased when they started chanting “Résistance! Résistance!”, almost identical to 1789, I’m sure.
In the middle of the march melée I managed to find myself in a compromising position, as my tights had fallen down – really quite significantly. Past the point of no return, and given the shortness of my dress I became somewhat desperate to find a toilet, or any private place to do some hitching. This led us to a pub, and a drink, before finally getting back en route and finding the bookshop I’d heard of, ‘Shakespeare and Company’. Such a fantastic place! The ground floor was spectacular enough, piled floor to ceiling with books, but I was entranced by the second floor, equally stuffed with volumes but not for sale, to read only. The premise of the place is writers can stay there in exchange for helping to staff it, but they must also read a whole book a day. How I wish I were an itinerant student, if only I’d known about this place sooner! (a lot sooner, I’d have had to make some pretty different career choices.)
We sat and read for quite a while, but our early start began to catch up and we headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap. Michael’s nap became very long, and I began to wonder if he was going to sleep through until morning, but eventually he woke up enough for us to go out for a rather late dinner. Fortunately, it seems the French like to eat late so nobody really batted an eyelid. There was a pleasant enough restaurant very close to the hotel, which seemed sort of rustic despite being in the middle of Paris. Not intentionally, either. We were just looking at the menu, hadn’t said a word, when the waiter came by and spoke to me in English and handed me an English menu. Ok, so French people look French, but do I look English?? Definitively so, that I don’t need to even open my mouth to have my nationality identified? I’m not sure this is any kind of good thing. It rather puts paid to any ideas I might have been harbouring about becoming a spy, international woman of mystery.
Day two, we tried the local patisserie “Miss Manon”. We had a very French breakfast of coffee and pain au chocolat. Well, mine was actually a choco-banane, and it was fabulous. The Picasso museum, being in the area, was our first stop. We found it, only to discover it was closed. Until spring of 2012, which seemed rather a long time to wait.
The aim of the rest of the day was to see the sights. As Michael said, “I just won’t really believe I’m in Paris until I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower”.
Looking at the map, the Picasso museum was only a short walk from the Pompidou Centre. Which wasn’t far away from the Louvre, which was the beginning of a string of sights along the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomph, which was then only a road away from the Eiffel Tower. Walking seemed like a sensible idea. Regrettably.
We’d walked really quite far on day one. On day two my feet were really quite annoyed with me for leaving my walking shoes in the car at home and forcing them to walk in shoes with soles akin to cardboard. Michael was also wearing smart but not necessarily comfortable loafers, and so it was a walk with plenty of stops along the way. Fortunately, Parisian town planning has afforded plenty of beautiful buildings and monuments conveniently located along the route we were taking. First up was the Louvre, which was much, much bigger than I’d imagined it would be. We decided not to go in, partly as the queue was really long at this point and partly because you’d need three days in there to do it any justice at all.
As we passed into the Tuileries, Michael spotted the sight we’d been waiting for: the first glimpse of la Tour Eiffel. Far away but unmistakeable. And now we were really in Paris!
We spent a lovely half hour or so relaxing in the October sun around one of the pools at either end of the Jardin des Tuileries before having lunch. “Where are you from?” the waiter asked (maybe not so obvious after all). He was very excited that I live in Liverpool. “Ah! Liverpool!! Champion de la futbol!!”
Before long we found ourselves looking up at the Obélisque de Louxor and then on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Passing the Grand Palais and Petit Palais we decided to attain a little culture, have a look around the Petit Palais (the free entry one). We found some reproductions of famous works, nothing actually original. We did, however, find the coffee shop and had a lovely café in the bright sunshine looking at some beautiful architecture.
Back on our way, the Arc de Triomphe was in sight, although seemingly not getting any closer no matter how far we walked towards it. The Champs-Élysées is loooong! A quick stop to buy hats and we carried on, and eventually, the arch was before us. Us and rather a lot of other people. It was nearly evening and the veterans were gathering to keep the eternal flame stoked. We had a date with the Eiffel Tower however and soldiered on.
We walked towards the Trocadero, Michael photographing more doors, and even though the tower was tantalisingly close, my poor feet couldn’t take much more without a little rest. Michael’s feet didn’t object too much either. We had a sit on an obliging bench and rather than face the street, faced the walls of the houses. This turned out to be fortuitous for Michael, who looked up and noted with delight the wrought ironwork of the second-floor balcony: the exact same design as the Grand Staircase on the Titanic! The building helpfully told us the name of the architect, one George Farcy, who designed this particular edifice in 1911, the very same year Titanic was being built. Now, the question is, did M. Farcy have any involvement in the design of the Titanic? Or did they rip it off? Or is it just a really common design?
Finally we made it to the Trocadero, and through the gap in the middle, the tower! It is pretty big. Well, 300m ain’t small by any standards. Later in the evening Michael told me the height in metres of all the other tall structures in the world. I can never remember such details, I suspect it is my left-handedness and therefore right sided brain which won’t let me.
At the tower we decided to go up. Of course, we couldn’t not! In front of us was a German couple. Obviously students, dressed in the leather grungy style. She had a Hawaiian lei attached to her backpack, along with a Mercedes hood ornament, no doubt meant to look as if it’s been taken without consent from some rich car owner, but more likely picked up in some studenty grungy arcade shop. (Incidentally, there was a collection of homeless people outside the Pompidou centre, including a mangy looking dog who sported just such a hood ornament around his neck. I have no doubt where that came from.) The studenty grungy type boy had a long blonde ponytail, which was in better condition than my wind-whipped hair (instantly annoying). They took every opportunity to kiss each other. The occasional PDA I can cope with, this is Paris after all, but really these two went beyond the pale. I tried looking away, but could still see them. I pulled faces at Michael, considered lopping off that immaculate ponytail, until finally I snapped. “Get a frickin’ room!” I cried. They didn’t hear. I was probably drowned out by their own personal Mozart. Or Nine Inch Nails, whatevs.
I was a bit upset that the signs were telling us the top was closed due to congestion, but as we approached the ticket booth it reopened, hurrah! Michael got a discount for being under 24, I am 3 years too late. Curses. We got to the top just before dusk, as the lights came on, and got to see Paris both in the daylight and (as we were there for a while) at night, the city lit up beneath us. A few more kissing couples, but thankfully no proposals. It is very nice to come to Paris with a brother such as mine, but it’s not quite the same as with un amant.
From the top we could see all the sights we’d seen during our long walk, and also see just how bloody far we’d gone. (We tried to work it out later on, easily 8 miles. And these boots (shoes) were most definitely not made for walking!) It was very cold up there, my hands were frozen, so much so that I feared losing control of them and dropping my iPhone slash camera from the top. Horrors! Cold chills at the thought. We went to the enclosed level just below, phoned les parents, I briefly turned on my data capabilities to inform the Facebook world of my location.
We took the lift back down to the second floor, just in time to see the flickering lights which come on for the first 10mins every hour from dusk. Back down at the bottom we walked to the first restaurant we came to and had a meal. The price of drinks was nearly the cost of a meal. In fact, you could buy a litre of soft drink for €16.80. That’s nearly 3 hours work for someone on minimum wage. For 2 big glasses!
My feet were barely in one piece (2 pieces?) at this stage so it was the metro back to the hotel. Thank the lord for the invention of transport. Any kind of moving vehicle! At the hotel we found a note asking us to pay the balance before bed, which is a little odd but I’d read about it on tripadvisor so wasn’t unduly concerned. Debts settled we slept easily until woken at 6am by glass bottle dumping outside the window. Managed to successfully ignore it and got in an extra couple of hours before getting up and once again getting alternately scalded and frozen by the shower until finding a happy medium.
Another breakfast at Miss Manon, café noir et pain au chocolat for Michael (a creature of habit), chocolat chaud et choco-framboise for me. I like to ring the changes and would try every item in the patisserie if I could.
We then checked out of the hotel, and the staff very kindly agreed to look after our bags for the day, before heading off in the direction of the Seine again. We boarded the batobus, a boat-bus (as the name might suggest) and began a leisurely trip down La Seine. “La Seine a de la chance,” I recited. “Elle n’a pas de souci. Elle se la coule douce, la jour comme la nuit. Et elle sort de sa source, tout doucement, sans bruit”. Michael did not look impressed. He didn’t look impressed on day one when I recited it, either. the first or the second time. I considered launching into La Coccinelle, the only other French poem I know, but decide against it. It really had no relevance at that moment.
Michael wanted a picture of the Eiffel tower from the end of the gardens which we didn’t quite make it to in the daylight yesterday. We fought our way through the crappies, hawking their crappy wares. Michael still fairly polite (“non, merci”), me less so (“non, non, NON!”) and made it to the view we wanted. Of course, other people wanted it too, and did not mind jumping in front of me to ruin my photos with their unnecessary heads, but finally I was satisfied and we fought out way back through the crappies to the boatbus stop. They are all the same, their wares. Models of the Eiffel tower in various sizes and colours. The glass ones weren’t too bad but I had seen at least four of these, broken, scattered around the city. And they were all selling at the same price. Keyrings! 5 for 1 euro! 5 for 1 euro. “Now,” said Michael, if someone offered 6 for 1 euro I might take notice”. Although, of course, we wouldn’t.
Back on the boatbus we went to La Musée d’Orsay. We eschewed the Louvre for this gallery which was once a railway station and houses a large collection of Monet’s works. It is a big gallery, and my feet were still ridiculously sore from the previous day’s epic walk. There was a lot of sitting down to be done on the journey round. We got to the Monet bit only to find a sign that told us the 53 Monets were transferred 3 weeks ago to the Grand Palais Museum for an exhibition. Bollocks. There was a good selection of Manet works though, which is only one letter out. Fortunately neither of us paid full price, Michael got in free by virtue of being under 25. (2 years too late for me. Curses.) I seemed to pay only half but i don’t know why. Maybe they knew I only wanted to see Waterlilies.
Batobus again, we could have got off where we got on but stayed for an extra few stops. To get our money’s worth. Headed to the bakery where we went on the first day but found it is closed in Wednesdays and Thursdays. Curses again! Found another though. So nice to see people coming in, getting their daily baguettes. It seems like a French cliché but people really do go to the boulangerie and get their pain quotidien. We had to wait what seemed like an age for them to heat a panini whilst staring at all the pastries but it was worth it when we got to a little park and finally (at 3pm) had our lunch. Michael had another tarte au citron, I had ordered what I can only assume is their house special seeing as it bore the same name as the patisserie (“Desir de Manon”) which turned out to be a chocolatey moussey thing which had not held up all that well to the sun and was somewhat messy to eat sans fourchette. But that’s what fingers are for and I managed to get most of it per oris without looking like a 10 month old who has just discovered chocolate buttons.
Back to the hotel to collect our bags and then a farewell visit to Miss Manon for another café. From Le Marais we took the metro to Montmartre, another really cool area although more reminiscent of the Amélie film than the Moulin Rouge film.
The point of the visit was to see the Sacré Coeur but the steps nearly crucified me!
Michael was well able to zoom up them but I really realised how unfit I am. I must have been tomato coloured by the time I reached the summit but it was worth it for the view of Paris which unfolded below. Paris is a very white city. In the way Siena is a brown city, Florence is a pink city, Aberdeen is a grey city and Oz is an emerald city. It is beautiful from all angles. I suppose the wonderful clear skies we had have made a world of difference but I am sure it would be the same even in drizzle.
We didn’t have a great deal of time left before having to get to the station to go home but decided, as we were in the area, we had to see the Moulin Rouge. We headed that way, Michael finding yet more doors, but of course there was time to stop for a little coffee. We chose Le Café des Deux Moulins, the very same that Amélie waited tables at (in the film) and disconcertingly there was a shrine to said Amélie in the toilet. (Well, not actually IN the toilet…) Complete with garden gnomes.
A quick look at the rather over modernised Moulin Rouge and it was off to the metro to La Chapelle and there a long underground walk to Gare du Nord and the Eurostar, just in time for check-in! It was lovely to have a rest and relax after such a lot of walking, and I thought with pleasure of having a hot bath and massaging my feet with cool cool cream. Home again now. To plan my next trip. But I’d definitely go to Paris again.
Lambanana's Blog 