Photos : France, Paris
“So what to buy the wife” I asked myself. Something tangible or intangible…I chose both with the latter being a weekend away in Paris. It was another Eurostar weekend where we left Friday night after work arriving Paris 2.5 hours later in time for a late dinner.
The Metro
To find your way from the Eurostar terminal/platform to the Metro should be easy. It should be easy but it depends on which line you want to take and it depends if you can think outside the square. We did OK and made our way to the appropriate line to head to our hotel. Only took about 30 mins to figure out how to get to the correct line. I had delusions that Paris was a romantic and clean city…wrong! The Metro has a smell all to its own and frankly it can keep its smell.
The tickets for the Metro in Paris can be a little confusing to us simpletons. We purchased our 2 hour tickets that should be enough to get us back to the main station however these tickets only apply to one direction. Confused? Each platform has gates at the ends where you must scan your ticket therefore if you go the wrong way for one stop you can’t walk over to the other platform and re-scan your ticket. This happened to us once or twice 🙁
Beware the false advertising
The hotel touted it had 100’s of TV channels, which was true. The thing not readily apparent, except to those of you who have been to Paris, is only about 4 of those are in English and all are news stations playing the same 15 minutes of ‘world’ news over and over and over and over and over and over…you get the picture? Oh well. We managed to watch English movies badly dubbed into French with occasional English subtitles. I suppose you could call it ‘an experience’ watching Law and Order spoken in English, dubbed in French with no subtitles however I would say it was on my top 1000000000 things you should do before your time’s up.
Out hotel got a variety of rating from 2-5 (5 being the highest). Confused we did some research and found that it was in the midst of a refurbishment therefore we took a gamble and consid
Walkbout in Paris
We got up late, must have been tired from the long trip. 🙂 Our hotel was about 500 meters from the Arc de Triomphe therefore very central to the things we wanted to see on our first visit. We did the usual tourist thing of checking out the sites around town close to our hotel. We walked from out hotel down the Champs-Elysess towards the Grand Palais and came across a gallery with some interesting artwork outside. Use your imagination about what they represent.
The weather was ominous, as evidenced by the clouds in some of the photos, but it held off for us. We kept walking towards the Palais Royal Musee de Louvre taking a side track across the river. Compared to the Thames and the Yarra in Melbourne, the La Seine in Paris is the winner hands down. After are river crossing at the entrance to Place des Invalides we headed to the Place de la Concorde where a 3300 year old pink granite obelisk from Egypt stands. Onwards we marched to the Louvre for the obligatory photo of the glass pyramid. We didn’t go inside as time was running out in the day and we thought we could save that for another day. Rather than catch the Metro we walked back up ‘The Champs’ and saw our fist French fight. It was between a lady who had been caught trying to shoplift and the security guards. She managed to hit one of them but the curious onlookers (yes I was one of them for a moment) would not have let her get far assuming she could escape their clutches. The security guard barely moved but had to put his glasses back on after the hit.
A well known restaurant L’Os a Moelle
Dinner at night was across town at a restaurant L’Os a Moelle that was rated highly. Had a fixed price 6 course, I think, meal where you are offered a choice of 2 or 3 dishes per course. The food was very good however the restaurant is what they call ‘cosy’…it felt so cosy I rather enjoyed sitting on the lap of the table next to us! OK so maybe not quite that bad and yes it was cosy and maybe just in the Parisian style.
We would recommend the restaurant however due to the menu structure you can’t afford to be too fussy with your
Eiffel Tower
After dinner we figured we should be able to get to see the aerial (Eiffel Tower) on our way home before the trains stopped. We didn’t know if the police in Paris thought the same of jay walking as the UK police and as we ran across the road to take a photo it was right in front of a cop car. It braked and started to turn…we pretended to ignore them and luckily they seemed to be doing something better with their time so we were OK. We planned to head back there during the day and take some day shots (didn’t happen) but the night shots turned out pretty well.
The Eiffel Tower was built for the ‘Universal Exhibition’ in celebration of the French Revolution centenary, to be held in Paris 1900. Construction started in 1887 and finished in 189 taking 26 months to complete. It was inaugurated on 31st of March 1889 with the hoisting of the flag to the top. Originally the tower was to be removed after the exhibition. It was never a popular choice of design with many Parisians protesting during its construction and they even petitioned for its removal. The petition read, “We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigour and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower.”
As I understand it, the tower was save ironically by the military for it was the military that was using it for telecommunications. The 12 meter, approximate, antennae was placed atop the 312.27 meter structure and was used to dispatch Parisian taxis to the front line of the Marne and it therefore became a victory statue of that battle. It was also used to catch the infamous “Mata Hari” and, after this, its demolition became unthinkable to the French population.
Today it is the symbol of Paris, attracting over 6 million visitors each year. I wouldn’t travel from Australia to see it and it’s not awe inspiring but it is impressive considering when it was built.
Where not to eat Chinese food!
For our last day in Paris you would think we would do more of the main tourist attractions. We did to a degree however first we had to make a stop at China Town…Paris style. The Lonely Planet described one place as the best in the area so we tracked it down. Hmmm…the author of Lonely Planet is an idiot or maybe just has no sense of taste or appreciation of Chinese food. It was lousy! So lousy we ate only a few dishes, managed to grab one of the many rude waiters in the grotty restaurant so we could pay the bill and get out of the place. We left to head to a Vietnamese restaurant we saw when we were tracking down the Chinese restaurant. Our ‘second’ lunch was authentic and we had a great lunch. So the lesson here is Chinese sucks in Paris and Vietnamese rocks….or maybe you should never trust Lonely Planet when it comes to Chinese food.
Notre Dame
So carting our bags around, our train left around 5, we headed towards the station via Notre Dame. Notre Dame ‘Our Lady’ de Paris was constructed in three stages with the cathedral being completed in 1250. The building has seen different rulers, invaders, archdeacons and more. Its design is Gothic and during construction had the designed changed/interpreted differently by each party responsible for its build. Organised teams of workers would migrate from town to town according to the stage of construction which required their expertise.
The region surrounding Paris was rich in a variety of quality stone and the majority of material used in Notre Dame was taken from nearby quarries. Final dressing of the stone elements was completed in the masons’ lodge, adjoining the cathedral. The west facade which took twenty five years to complete up to the level of the rose window and another twenty five years to finish the twin towers with the rest of the cathedral taking over five decades to complete.