Paris – The City of Lights, Love and Baguettes

Waking up Monday morning after only having 3 hours sleep due to the Madrid airport debacle the day before, I assumed I would maybe get through half the day and then need a nanna nap to continue. Kate and I decided to walk into the city, check out a few things and then do the New Europe free (no charge, but you tip) Walking tour of Paris. As we walked into the city it is easy to see why people fall in love with this city, as unlike other major cities involved in World War 2, it had very little damage, and therefore has all of its amazing buildings still on show. It seems like every corner you turn, there is another beautiful old building to look at.

When we got into the city, we walked along the Seine towards the Louvre. The building of the Louvre, which is an old Palace, is massive and it needs to be as it now houses over thirty five thousand pieces. We sat around the fountain area in the centre for a while, dipping our feet in the water, as it was about 30’C, until we were approached by Lynden. Lynden is an Aussie who has been living in London for a while. It was his first day in Paris, and he noticed me wearing a wifebeater and Havianas and decided that I would be worth a chat. We talked for a bit about travelling, Paris and what to do and he decided to come on the free tour also.

When we got to Place St Michel, the meeting point for the tour, there were hundreds of students running around, sing dancing, getting people to write on them with magic marker and generally celebrating that they would be starting another year of University. St Michel is in the Latin Quarter and is a massive student area, due to one of the old historic Universities being right around the corner. One young guy came up to me and asked me to write something on his back. I figured I’d write what my tattoo means “This moment is your Eternity”, and had written “this” when he said “make it dirty, as dirty as possible”. I’m like “are you sure?” and he was, so I then wrote “this boy loves the Cock”. I could have been dirtier, but we were in public. His mate seemed to think it was amusing anyway.

So we headed off on the walking tour, seeing and learning little tidbits of information about Notre Dame, The Louvre, Paris’ beginnings, Modern Parisian life, The Arc de Triomphe, Tiulleries Gardens, The monolith, The Basilica of Sacre Coeur and heaps more. By the end, my brain was a little full of all this information, but I had had a fantastic time leaning about, and acquainting myself with the amazing city of Paris. On the way back to the hostel, Kate and I got some wine and cheese and had a night in on our balcony, discussing Paris and what we had seen that day and generally having a fairly quiet night.

I woke up on Tuesday morning as a thirty one year old. I wasn’t terribly pleased about this, but there’s no way to stop it, so all I can do is accept it. Father Time just keeps on rolling along. After breakfast I went to the internet café for a bit and it made me smile to see all the happy birthday messages from people, but also very sad because I miss all of my friends back in Australia and now scattered about Europe as well. I tried to reply to some messages and emails, but the French keyboard is all fucked up, switching a whole bunch of letters from the English one and therefore driving me fucking nuts when I try to type anything. After I had composed myself, I went back to the hostel and Kate and I went into the city once again. We had seen the Eiffel tower and Arc de Triomphe the day before, but we hadn’t gone right up to them, and we planned to do that.

The Arc de Triomphe is hugely impressive from up close. I had no idea how truly massive it is, and was also blown away by the intricacies of its decoration. The roundabout that surrounds it is also worth a few mentioning as it is a calamity of insane driving and balls in the wind aggressiveness. No insurance company in the world will cover you if you have an accident on that roundabout, because one happens about every few hours on average. The major problem is that the people on the roundabout have to give way to the people entering the roundabout, hence traffic flows and then stops along the roundabout with no determinable progression.

After the Arc de Triomphe, we had planned to head down to the Eiffel tower, via the Trocadero Gardens. It’s a fairly short walk from the Arc do Triomphe, but it started raining very heavily and we decided this might be a trip for another day. We jumped on a subway and went into the shopping area of town, as I had decided that I wanted some new clothes on my birthday and Kate was chasing some stuff also. I got myself a new jacket as my birthday present to myself and then had a Royal Cheese and a glass of beer at a Parisian McDonalds, in honour of the scene from Pulp Fiction. It was great! We then went up the top of the Printemps (like a Myer) building, where they had an observation deck. It was just one or two stories above the rest of the Parisian rooftops, so you got a fantastic view of the city, with the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower understandably dominating the skyline.

After all this, the weather had improved so we went back to the Eiffel Tower, and even though I had been looking at it for two days, it is still pretty amazing to look up to it up close and know that it the real Tower. We walked towards it, as did many other tourists, heads turned skyward in wide eyed amazement. After walking around the base, taking loads of photos and generally enjoying the fact that we were in Paris, we made our way up through the Trocadero gardens and sat on the steps for a while, soaking it all in. Some rollerblade kids were zooming around, doing tricks on the stairs while tourists watched them, or took photos of themselves in front of the tower.

We made our way back to the hostel and put some dry clothes on before heading out to Montmartre for some drinks and a birthday meal. On our way through the bohemian, artistic and seedy suburb, we walked up to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, which sits atop Montmartre, named thus as it was the Mount where the Romans performed their executions, hence Mount of the Martyrs. This basilica is a brilliant white church which brings together architectural styles from the Gothic, Roman and Byzantine periods. There were hundreds of people out on the steps of the basilica as it has a fantastic view out over the city, and we sat around ourselves for a while, enjoying the night view of Paris.

Making our way down the stairs, we saw the police arresting some dude who had been causing trouble and it was clear that the Parisian police do not fuck around. This guy got owned, hard. We then walked through the streets of Montmartre, walking past many full bistros and bars until we came to one that had seats available, and they had crepes on the menu, so I was sold. Upon further investigation it was clear I had not chosen the cheapest place to eat, but it was my birthday and we were already here, so we stayed. I ate my excellent crepe and we shared a fantastic crème brulee before heading off to the Moulin Rouge, which is not very impressive at all, and then taking the short walk back to the hostel.

We woke up on Wednesday morning to hear that Thursday and Friday were going to be shit weather, so we decided to bring our Montmartre walking tour forward as we had originally planned to go into the Louvre today. The Montmartre tour was excellent with the sights including some of the places Amelie was filmed, where Picasso ate and lived, where Van Gogh lived and numerous other little interesting tads of information. At the end of the tour we sat down for a glass of wine with some of the other tourists and Alex, our guide and had a nice chat about Paris, and what it’s like to be a tour guide, as I have been toying with the idea of doing this myself in Berlin for a while now.

We came back to the hostel and had a quick nap before heading out again to do the Fat Tire Night Bike Tour of Paris. The night bike tour started with us nearly getting killed by a French bus as we followed our tour guide through an intersection and through a red light. Not the greatest start, but the tour itself was fantastic, and ended with a wine filled boat cruise down the Seine. Adam was a great tour guide also, with a humour and intellect that you don’t always get with Americans. The night ended as we once again walked past the Eiffel Tower, and this time we got to see it go all sparkly, which was pretty amazing.

Thursday morning was a fairly late start as we had a bit of wine the night before. We finally got up and to the Louvre at about 1pm and expected massive crowds, due to the weather being average. To my pleasant surprise the crowds were fairly low and I was able to walk up to the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo with a minimum of fuss. The Mona Lisa was very impressive, and not actually as small as I had been led to believe. It was pretty awesome to know you were looking at the actual Mona Lisa, and it went a long way to ease the irritation I felt at the rude and pushy people jostling for a slightly better photo position around me. The Venus de Milo was also pretty cool, because of the “it’s the real one” factor, although I must admit I’d prefer the Gummy de Milo, from The Simpsons. One of the more interesting things about the Venus de Milo is that they don’t actually know who it is. They assume it is Aphrodite, but due the fact that the arms have never been found, and hence there is nothing to give away which goddess she is, they just don’t know for sure. After seeing the big two sights of the Louvre, we walked through the ancient Etruscan, Greek and Egyptian sections, then sculpture and then Napoleon III’s apartments. After that we decided we had had enough art and culture for one day and went looking for a beer and a meal.

We had our meal, and like everything else in Paris, it was pretty expensive. The weather had cleared a little in this time and we decided to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The line wasn’t too bad as the crowds were relatively small due to the inclement weather earlier in the day. It was stupidly windy at the top, but is an amazing way to see the sprawl of the city. Plus, it’s cool to know you’re at the top of the Eiffel tower. After the freezing wind at the top, it was quite warm down on the ground as we passed through the Trocadero Gardens to catch the Metro to Blanche. At Blanche we walked up the hill, past the Moulin Rouge to the Café Des Moulin’s, this is the café used in the film, Amelie. We sat down, had a hot chocolate and a crème brulee, got some photos in the café, said hello to the gnome from the movie that sits proudly on the bar and we were then on our way back to our hostel. That night we got a bottle of red and stayed in, as we’d both been burning through the money over the past few days. It was nice to take it easy for a night, as Paris has so much to see, that it’s easy to be on the move all the time trying to see everything.

Friday morning came around and we weren’t exactly sure what we should do. I had noticed the night before that my bucket of shit camera had lost all my photos from the last few days, including the Louvre, the top of the Eiffel and Paris by night. I was understandably pissed and we spent the most part of the morning and early afternoon searching for a shop with the retrieval software to get these photos back. In the end, the language barrier proved too much and I gave up on this mission. I ended up just buying a new camera, the same model that was stolen in Barcelona, and then we went to Notre Dame for a few hours. Notre Dame is an amazingly beautiful cathedral, probably the most impressive I have seen in Europe, and is architecturally advanced for its time. The relic of the crown of thorns was on display, as it is the first Friday of every month. While it is not the actually crown of thorns, as the King who purchased it believed it was, it is still about 500 years old, and was pretty cool to see. After we left Notre Dame we headed home to get ready for the pub crawl.

The pub crawls started with us waiting in Place St Michel, watching some awesome break dancing while we waited to sign up. The first bar was crap, with expensive drinks and rude attendants, but we didn’t stay there for long and we were soon on our way to the next bar. This is where things got a little crazy as we were getting 5euro cocktails and a double shot with each drink. I was talking to a guy from Lebanon who says that the country is safer than France (good to know) and some girls from New Zealand and the UK. We then went to the next bar and were still getting double shots and reasonably cheap drinks. By the next bar it was all too much for Kate as shit had begun to lose her shit. I took her home on a very interesting Metro ride and we were back at the hostel by 1am. Somehow I had still spent 50euro, so it’s a good thing we never got to the club.

The next morning we both woke up feeling pretty average. It took us a while just to get out of the house and when we did we made it into town and got some food and just sat around on the grass near the Louvre. When you actually sit there for a while, you see a lot of sparrows, pigeons and rats. They’re everywhere. When we became tired of watching the rats chase the sparrows, we walked through the Tuilleries and then made our way back to the hostel. We chilled out for a bit and watched some movies on my laptop, before heading into town to have a bottle of wine and some food on Pont des Arts, which translates to “the Artists bridge”. It connects the Louvre with the Academy, and is a pedestrian only bridge where students and youth (I know, what am I doing there, right?) go to dink, play music, sing, eat and generally have a good time. It was great fun meeting a whole bunch of French kids and a few travelling Germans aswell.

Sunday morning it was time to get up and pack. Kate was flying back to England and I had to move to my other hostel where Nic would show up later in the evening before our flight to Porto on Monday. I spent most of the day using the WiFi at St Christophers Hostel to upload photos as the last hostel didn’t have WiFi. It was also awesome to be able to watch the MotoGp for the first time in ages, but unfortunately it was another procession for Rossi. When I checked into my room I realized that I needed a padlock for my locker (my old padlock was a casualty of the Barcelona bag stealing) so I went out to find one. Nothing was open, so no padlock, but I did see a scooter police chase, with a dude on a scooter getting chased the wrong way down a one way street by a French cop on a scooter. Amusing stuff. I then took a nap in my room before watching some tennis and some AFL in the chillout area while waiting for Nics Busabout bus to arrive. When she finally got there we arranged our check-in for the spastic Ryanair flights that depart from some random spastic airport that meant we had to be up and out of our hostel by 5:30am.

Waking up at stupid o’clock is never fun, and my last morning in Paris was no different. The good thing however is that the Paris metro is excellent. It’s a little pricey, but when it is running there are trains pretty much every 5-7 minutes. We got to the point where the Beauvais airport shuttle point by 6:45am and then we arrived at the airport just before 8am. After a bit of luggage juggling to get both our bags under the weight limit we were on the plane and on our way to Porto. Ryanair sucks balls. The seats don’t lean back and they’re trying to sell you some random crap every five minutes. Oh well, at least I wasn’t stuck at the airport for 10 hours like the fight to Paris, so I guess I should be happy.

My week in Paris was amazing in every way. I think possibly this was helped by nearly everyone I know saying that Paris was dirty, the people rude, the crime high and generally overrated. I experienced none of these things. Instead I experienced the beauty of the French capital, its great food, its lovely people and its safe, well policed streets. I think the French pastime is public shows of affection. You couldn’t turn a corner or walk through a park without seeing some very public macking going on. This could obviously be tourists, but I think it is the passion and lust sweeping through every alley, over every bridge and past every street lamp that fills locals and tourists alike with these feelings of affection toward each other. Paris is a just so full of history, beauty and love that one cannot ignore this. It is Paris’ gift to all who come here.