Mon, 27 Oct 2003

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 22:28 CET 29/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

First Paris Wanderings ( 53 photos )
After a great night's sleep after the bus the night before, we packed up our things as we needed to move to a cheaper room. But first breakfast came, and we missed our chance to get the nice window seat. There wasn't really enough places for breakfast for the amount of people staying there, but I guess you can't really complain too much for a zero-star hotel!
The breakfast was good enough, plenty of hot drinks and of course the French baguette, to become our staple diet of the next few days. After moving to the smaller, no-view but still clean enough for our needs room, we dumped our things again and went out to explore the city.
About two minutes walk away is one of the city's most famous sites - Cathédral Notre-Dame. It too is on Île de la Cité, the other end to our hotel. It wasn't hard to work out what it was when we spotted it thanks to the cameras and bus-loads of tourists around, but I have to admit I expected something more impressive. It is one of those buildings who's front face hides a lot of interesting things inside.
And what an inside it has, as we found out with a great wander around the place. It's huge of course, with plenty of stained glass like most other similar churches, but this has also lots of great frescoes.
To me the interest of places like this is from an architectural point of view, and that is just as well. I think if I were more of a religeous person, I would have been sorely disappointed. They allow free entry (good, it's built for the people after all), photography (wonderful, it doesn't damage anything), flashes (bad, bad, bad - very distracting and also potentially damaging), but worst of all loud talking and mobile phones.
It's all well and good to hope that people will be nice and give the place the respect it deserves, but it will take more than the stares of Liz and I to make people like one Japanese buiseness man doing a loud deal on his phone as we wandered around change their ways. Others didn't really even notice, since they were talking so loudly themselves. A sad state of affairs, really.
After that, we walked outside for a breather, escaping about 98% of the tourists by simply walking around the other side of the building into a rather pleasant park there. Liz pointed out and explained the flying butresses on the building - something I had never heard of but which she told me were hold the higher walls of the building in. Learn something new every day!
At the far-east tip of the island we wandered into Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation - the city's holocaust memorial. It was different from others in other places we have seen, with strange haunting architecture designed to evoke understanding of the conditions people lived and died in. Reading the names on the walls of the concentration camps we visited in Germany was spooky enough for us, it's almost beyond imagination what the actual experience must have been like.
Even though the weather was so terrible that we could no longer pick out the Eiffel Tower from where we were, we decided that a walk over to that part of town would be worth while, with a few detours.
First through Jardin des Tuileries next to the Louvre, where we admired all the grounds as we wandered along westward - plenty of proper outdoor chairs which no doubt were packed full on better days than this with people all around the fountains and ponds, enjoying living and working in such a beautiful city. At the end of the Jardin, we entered Place de la Concorde. Or I should say cautiously waited for the crossing, as this is one of those amazing French intersections with lots of roads all coming together, governed by very few rules. There is an Ejyptian obelisk in the middle, pilfered like so many others we have seen on our travels - when we ever make it there there will be nothing left of the place. By this stage we could make out the Eiffel Tower, except for the top. Very misty though.
It was still plenty cold as we made our way along Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the famous wide street leading up towards the Arc de Triomphe. We just kept on walking, waiting for lights to cross, snapping the occasional photo when less than ten million cars were in the frame, and dodging scam-artists who curiously wanted us to buy bags and wallets for them, with cash, since their duty-free allowance had been used up. Steer well clear of that one.
Eventually we were at place Charles de Gaulle. This place is totally crazy - the world's largest roundabout. As earlier, there are no lanes marked out, just thriteen different roads from which drivers attempt to fight their way to another road somewhere on the other side a long way away.
I say a long way because in the middle is the dominating Arc de Triomphe, built by Napoleon to celebrate just how good he was. How modest. It is a very French thing though, with a massive French flag flying underneath leaving you in no doubt where you are.
We would have been stupid to attempt to get to the arch with any other method than the underground passage - a bit sad, but offset by the fact that there were some great panorama photographs underneath. We said no thanks to the lift operators about a ride to the top, instead appearing just next to the arch to have a look around. There is a flame burning in rememberance of unknown soldiers, and of course that truly massive flag. Plenty of nice sculpture too.
Having come this far into tourist-land, there wasn't much left for it but to power on to the Eiffel Tower and get it all over and done with in one go. The weather meant that we didn't want to go up it today, but we still wanted a look.
We wiggled our way through streets, over bridges, then more little streets, taking the shortest path on our weary legs. For most of the last part we couldn't see it due to the high (but not skyscraper) buildings all around, and there it was! Right up there with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Colosseum and Big Ben, the most touristy sight in Europe trip was finally in sight.
Clearly we had arrived by a strange path to the place, from the north on the other side of the river - a path yet to be discovered by enterprising tourist-junk sellers, as we didn't see one until we were right near Pont d'Iéna, the bridge leading to the tower. Curiously, it was actually quite cheap, and Liz grabbed a scarf since the weather was so chilly and ours are back in, you guessed it, the van.
Just on the other side of the bridge, the real pestering began, but so did the fantastic views - the tower truly is huge, way bigger than we had imagined. Hard to believe it was almost pulled down in 1909, spared only because it was a great place to hang antennae for radio transmissions. With the mind-boggling array of souviners available displaying it and the shere quantity of people queueing for lifts up even in the terrible weather, I'm sure the French are glad it was saved after all. Plus, even given all that, it's still kind of nice to look at.
Walking out the other side, we took more photos of course, but none really that good due to the weather. We set across the city, via a post office where the helpful guy told me that he could either sell me a package for eighteen euros to post my CDs home or I could go to the newsagent ('Library') across the street, buy a package for one euro then he could sell me the stamps. Then, as the French say, Whalla! (Not sure of the spelling, though).
Next came the best news in ages - we finally got through to Donna from the Netherlands to find out when Rosie was being picked up for towing back there, only to hear that all systems are go and she should arrive in the next few days! Didn't expect that, things look to be working well for a change.... (touching plenty of wood on this table here).
We weaved our way back to our hotel via Place Vendôme with its interesting bronze central column and 'fashionable' shops, an Irish pub (hey, we miss the place!) which was hideously expensive and the saving some money by getting dinner from one of the big Monoprix supermarkets, near Pyramides Metro. These places are kind of strange, because they have a K-Mart type shop on the street level, then a supermarket (and maybe restaurant, ...) underneath. This makes getting a large quantity of shopping out difficult, but we managed our small haul just fine.
The trip also passed us through the Louvre - it's very strange having such a famous place as just something we pass through in our travels around town. Opening the doors to the hotel a wave of warmth came over us - it is getting truly chilly outside now, and we are looking forward in earnest to meeting up with our warm gear in the coming weeks.

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