Paris. The very name conjures up images of brain-dead celebrities, especially if you do a Google image search. But it turns out that it's also a city, and in August of 2007 that's where Mom and I decided to go, exchange rates be damned.
August 23-24
The Journey
Mom had arrived in Seattle the day before. After a frantic day at work, I raced home and we collected our stuff and took the shuttle to SeaTac, where we indulged in a sumptuous Burger King meal and sat around for a few hours. The flight was delayed, but we made up enough time in the air that we arrived almost on schedule.
Britain was clear and sunny until we got to London. I saw a huge estate out the window — a classically British stone building with extensive grounds. Very impressive. Turns out it was Windsor Castle. British passenger: “Americans ask, ‘Why did they put the castle so close to the airport?’ Well, no, dear, that’s not quite what happened.”
We got off the plane and into the construction zone that is Heathrow. It was all pretty well marked, but still a bit confusing. Then through another security line—Shoes off! Shoes on!—to another gate and out onto the tarmac just as it was starting to rain.
We spent most of the short flight talking to Sharon, a cosmetic surgeon from Kent, who was going to Paris for a convention. She showed us pictures of her vacation in the Maldives. The guy in front of us was from western France and warned us about rude people in Paris. He had learned English in Ireland, Arizona, and (I think) India.
We arrived at CDG, then walked for about 50 miles to the train terminal. We spent some time figuring out what to do, then stood in line at the information window. A French girl with minimal English tried to help us, semi-successfully. Eventually we got to the RER ticket window and got two tickets into town.
It was late afternoon on a Friday and the train was packed. We schlepped our bags on and made ourselves as small as possible.
Now, we really wanted to get to La Motte Picquet Grenelle station, but there’s no direct line to that station from CDG, so we had to transfer at Denfert Rochereau. We stood around on the platform for a while, then I asked a guy in a tobacco shop where to go. We had to go up and down several sets of stairs to get to the other line. Along the way, a French girl in her twenties helped Mom with her suitcase (I was carrying the other three). Mom said (in response to something) “C’est chouette!” which is French slang for “That’s cool!” It’s an odd expression, since chouette is the word for owl. But according to someone on the Internet who seems to know what she’s talking about:
"Avoir quelqu'un à la chouette" vient d'un verbe aujourd'hui disparu, chouer (=choyer). J'imagine que "c'est chouette" vient de là et non du petit rapace, pourtant bien sympathique.
Which means:
In avoir quelqu'un à la chouette = to like somebody, chouette comes from an Old French verb that no longer exists: chouer which meant to pamper. So I daresay the present day expression "c'est chouette" comes from that, and not from the bird of prey, as cool as it may be.
Anyway, we managed to get on the train and went for two stops before I realized that we were going in the wrong direction. So, off the train, down two flights of stairs, then up two flights of stairs on the other side. Then onto the train going the other way and we were set.
Until I saw the X through La Motte Picquet Grenelle. Something in French below it. Something about rénovation. With a completion date in September.
So we had to go to the Dupleix station, then walk back several blocks.
The hotel was easy to find and we picked up the keys okay, but since the station was closed, we decided to eat at the McDonald’s across the street before schlepping our suitcases to the next station.
We walked a few blocks to the Ségur station and took the train to Odeon. The Odeon station is on Boulevard Saint Germain, at an intersection with eight other streets, and street signs aren’t all that prominent. Eventually, I found Rue de l’Ancienne Comedie, which intersects with Rue Dauphine.
Rue de l’Ancienne Comedie and Rue Dauphine are both very busy and very full of people on a Friday night (and every other night as well), so we mostly went up the middle of the street with our suitcases. Found the apartment building okay, then dragged our suitcases up three flights of stairs to two apartments and nothing to indicate which one was ours. But the key only worked in one of them, so that was the one we took.
August 25
Luxembourg Gardens
The apartment looked like the photos on the web, though somewhat smaller, since photos like that are generally taken with a wide-angle lens so you can see everything. Otherwise it was identical.
In the morning we went to the nearest Starbucks, which was at 13 Boulevard Saint-Michel.
Afterward, we walked down Saint-Michel to Place Camille Jullian.
Walked up through the Luxembourg Gardens. Couldn’t find the Statue of Liberty. Walked back to the river via Rue de Tournon and Rue de Seine (which are different names for the same street), then over the Passerelle des Arts to the Right Bank, popped into the Cour Carree for a look at the Louvre, then walked along the Right Bank to Pont Neuf, crossed to Ile de la Cite. From there we walked the length of Ile de la Cite, crossed Pont Saint-Louis, and walked half the length of Ile Saint-Louis to the Berthillon ice cream shop, which was recommended by the Rick Steves guidebook. It was closed until September. But Amorino’s Gelato, also recommended, was open. So we went there.
We ate the gelato by the river, then walked across to the Left Bank and headed west, stopping at Shakespeare and Company books for a few minutes. Shakespeare and Co. is an English-language bookstore that’s a reincarnation of a famous Paris bookstore of the 1920s. While we were there, I heard the proprietor talking to a customer about government pension programs.
That evening, I withdrew another 100€ and we went to Quick for chicken wings. Walking back along Quai des Grands Augustins, we stopped to buy postcards and Mom bought an umbrella.
August 26
The Tuilleries and the Champs-Elysées
First thing in the morning we headed for the Louvre — not to see the art, but to go to Starbucks. The Louvre Starbucks is past the security check. Bought stamps at the Louvre post office.
From the Louvre we walked to the Tuilleries and rode the ferris wheel. This was the seasonal ferris wheel that’s part of the Tuilleries carnival thing.
We walked the length of the Tuilleries and out to the Place de la Concorde. As we left the Tuilleries, a short woman in a colorful long address approached us and said, “Excuse me, do you speak English?” I just said “No” and kept walking. Mom was concerned that she might need help, but she was obviously positioned there to work the tourist traffic. There was another one not far away.
We walked out to the center area and looked at the big obelisk thing. It was covered with Goua’ould writing. Then we headed up the Champs-Elysées.
The Champs-Elysées is longer than it at first seems. First you walk through a long park area to the Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées-Marcel Dassault. Walking through that, you come to the fancy area with the shops. There was a sign in front of a small shopping mall indicating restroom, so we went in. Down a corridor was a sort of restroom boutique that had public restrooms and sold all sorts of bathroom supplies. The restrooms were 2€ per person. I decided to wait, but Mom went in. Among the items for sale was decorator toilet paper, including — I kid you not — black. Not sure how you’d know you’re done.
We continued up the Champs-Elysées and stopped in McDonald’s for fries and Coke.
The Champs-Elysées was crowded. Train-station crowded. Disneyland crowded. It was actually difficult to walk. Other than that and the width of the street, it’s not all that different from Beverly Hills.
We stopped in the Virgin Megastore and I bought Disneyland tickets for the 28th. I got the park-hopper tickets so we could go to both parks during the day.
At the Place Charles de Gaulle, we saw someone wearing a shirt that said Ohio State Vikings 1935. Mom asked him if he’d gone to Ohio State, but he didn’t speak any English. In any case, Ohio State doesn’t have a team called the Vikings, and they probably wouldn’t have had t-shirts for them in 1935 anyway.
We went through the underpass to the Arc de Triomphe. Inside the tunnel were people selling little Eiffel Tower souvenirs. Once across, we stood in line to buy tickets. The admission is covered by the Museum Pass, but we hadn’t planned to go that day, so we didn’t have the passes with us.
Once we had the tickets, we headed up. And up and up. 284 steps.
There’s a level just below the top that contains a museum, gift shop, and restrooms. The museum was closed for renovation, and the gift shop was probably the cheesiest I saw in Paris. The restroom, however, was very entertaining.
We walked back down, puttered around the arch for a while, then headed back down the other side of the Champs-Elysées. We ventured off a few blocks to look at a building that appeared to be melting. It turned out to be a construction cover with a mural of the building within it, painted in a way to make it look like it was melting. Nearby was a building with strange windows.
At FDR station, we decided to take the Metro back, so we bought tickets and rode to Hotel de Ville, which, fortuitously, was right by a Quick. So we stopped for wings.
This was not far from the exterminator shop on Rue des Halles that was featured in Ratatouille. Since it was Sunday, it was closed, and there were bars over the window, so I couldn’t take a picture. We headed back over Pont Neuf.
August 27
The Eiffel Tower and the Batobus
In the morning I withdrew another 200€ and we went to the Saint-Michel Starbucks.
We took the Metro from Saint-Michel to the Eiffel Tower and arrived about a half hour before they opened. We passed the street vendors selling little Eiffel Towers and got in line for the west pillar. Behind us in line was a group of British tourists from London, so we spent some time talking to them. In front of us was a guy from Oregon and his son.
In talking about the European train system, Mom commented on how well planned it was. Older British guy said that it wasn’t planned at all. “If they’d planned it, it wouldn’t have worked.”
The Eiffel Tower has three levels: Level 1, with an outdoor cafe and various historical displays, Level 2, and Level 3 (the top). Because the tower flares out at the bottom, Level 1 is much larger than the others. The top two levels each have two levels of their own: an upper level that’s basically an outside view platform and a lower level that’s mostly inside.
Each elevator has two levels, the top for people who are not getting out at Level 1 and the bottom for people who are.
First we went to the top, because you have to go to the top. This requires two separate elevators. The first one takes you to Level 2 and is angled so steeply that it’s almost a funicular. Since the pillar curves outward at the base, the elevator has to change its angle as it ascends, which it does imperfectly, so that for a while the floor isn’t level and has to slowly straighten itself out. It’s a little like being on a boat. Once you reach Level 2, you get out and go stand in line for another elevator, which takes you to the top.
From the top, Paris is distant and tiny. You can see the streets radiating out from the Arc de Triomphe, the green area of the Bois de Balogne, and the Seine winding through the city. But you can’t see much detail. For that you need Level 2, so after a stint at the top, we went down to Level 2.
On Level 2, you’re high enough to see everything, but low enough to see what everything is. It’s also a larger area, so there are more amenities. At the snack bar, we ordered chicken sandwiches, but they were out of them, so we got reheated cheese pizza. Not exactly Paris cuisine.
Walked down to Level 1. Long way down the stairs.
On Level 1, I mailed my postcards at the post office, which uses an Eiffel Tower postmark.
As we were leaving, we were accosted by another Gypsy. “Excuse me, do you speak English?” Then she handed us a written account of the misfortunes that had befallen her. Her husband died, her dog ran away, etc. It was then obvious that asking people if they spoke English was the only English she knew. We declined to give her money.
We walked across Pont Alexandre III to the Trocadero. There were still no fountains apparent, just a long walkway uphill to the building. When we finally got to the base of the stairs, there was a large construction thingy, which seems to be where the fountain is supposed to be. So we walked back down again.
We decided to take the Batobus back to the apartment, or as close as we could get. The Batobus is 11€ for a one-day pass or 16€ for a five-day pass. We got five days and took the next boat to the Notre Dame stop, which I had incorrectly determined to be the closest to the apartment.
The Notre Dame stop was, reasonably enough, very close to Notre Dame. Mom had heard tell of some lovely free restrooms at Notre Dame, so we went across the bridge (Pont Something-or-Other) to see if we could find them. Well, no, we couldn’t. At that point, however, we were not far from Amorino’s, so we decided to get some gelato.
Just on the other side of Pont Saint-Louis, I heard a noise behind me and turned just in time to see Mom doing a spectacular face-first slide across the cobblestones. Some nearby Americans came running over and asked her if she was okay, which, amazingly, she was. Not a scratch. Well, one scratch, but just a small one.
We got our gelato, then headed back to the apartment.
After a break, we headed out again, down Rue Dauphine toward Boulevard St. Germaine. Along the way, we found a grocery store and went inside to check it out. We went out the front entrance, on another street, and worked our way out to St. Germaine. That got me turned around and we headed west on St. Germaine for several blocks before I realized my mistake and turned around.
When we finally got to St. Michel, we headed south for a few blocks before finding Pomme du Pain, which is a sandwich place, and not as painful than it sounds. The only other customer was a bum drinking a cup of coffee. He looked like Jack Elam. He stared at us the whole time we were there.
August 28
Disneyland
At 6:00 AM or some other inappropriately early time, we left for Disneyland. This involved walking from the apartment to the Châtelet les Halles station, then taking the RER to Disneyland by the time it opened at 9:00. It was kind of surprising that it opened so late; Anaheim Disneyland opens at 7:00 in August and stays open until 1:00 AM. Paris Disneyland was scheduled to close at 11:00 PM.
We wandered up and down Boulevard de Sebastopol for about a half an hour looking for the unmarked street to the station. It was a half a block away from some corner, and according to the map there were only two possibilities, but nothing quite matched, and there were no signs.
We eventually found it, then spent another 15 minutes or so inside the station trying to figure out where to get the tickets and catch the train. It wasn’t until we were on the train and had gone several stops that I could finally be sure we were on the right line and going the right direction.
The other end was much easier, as the line goes almost to he park entrance. To get to the entrance, you walk across a sort of courtyard and under the Disneyland Hotel.
There was a mob. With no clear line, everyone was just clustered under the hotel, waiting for…something. It was after 9:00, but nothing was happening, and we couldn’t see what was supposed to happen, or where it might be happening once it did start to happen. At 9:30 the when part was answered as people started moving. Gradually we got to the turnstiles and into the park. Apparently they didn’t open until 9:30, even though they had posted 9:00. Their printed program said 10:00, but you don’t get that until you’re inside. Well, okay.
I wanted to get a Fast Pass for Space Mountain right away, so after a restroom stop, we rushed down Main Street to Discoveryland (Tomorrowland). Which was closed. Until 10:00. As were all the other areas of the park except Main Street. So we puttered around nearby until 10:00, then went to the Fast Pass machines to find that we didn’t have the right size ticket for the machines.
Right. Back to the entrance, where apparently you have to ask for a special Fast Pass ticket. We also tried to put some of our stuff in lockers. There were rows of lockers near the entrance, but they had engraved brass signs saying they were permanently unavailable. No further explanation. I asked at the information area and they said they could probably hold our things for us at the hotel, but that didn’t sound worthwhile, so we just carried everything.
It was now about 10:45, so we wandered around Main Street for a while, then got lunch at the Market House Deli. Which was pretty good, though expensive at 16.70 (more than $20) for both of us.
Main Street has two passages behind the stores and running parallel to the street itself. On the left (facing down the street) is Liberty Arcade and on the right is Discovery Arcade.
Then at about noon, back to Discoveryland to get a Fast Pass, which worked this time.
Discoveryland has a Jules Verne theme that gives it a sort of steampunk look, meaning that it doesn’t have to try to predict the future the way Anaheim Tomorrowland was always trying to do. No TWA Rocket to the Moon, House of the Future, or Carousel of Progress. Given that, it seems like it should have been more substantial. What was there was nice, but as a whole it has the same cobbled-together feel that Tomorrowland does.
With two hours before my Space Mountain appointment, we went through Captain Nemo’s submarine (Les Mystères du Nautilus) and watched Honey, I Shrunk the Audience in French (Chérie, J’ai Rétréci Le Public). There were also language tracks for English, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian.
Still more than an hour to go, so we went over to Fantasyland. Paris Fantasyland is less congested than Anaheim Fantasyland. Built 37 years later, Paris Disneyland is structured for larger crowds. There are more alternate routes, wider pass-throughs, more restaurants, and more spacious central areas. The park itself isn’t any bigger, though, so this spaciousness comes at the cost of fewer attractions. Fantasyland is the exception, probably because the rides there are smaller. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride (the canonical Fantasyland attraction!) is gone, but in its place is Alice’s Curious Labyrinth, where we spent about a half an hour wandering through the maze and into a building that looks like a Disney version of Russian Orthodox Church.
Then back to Discoveryland where Mom got some popcorn and waited while I went on Space Mountain at about 2:00. Mission accomplished, and after only five hours!
From there we wandered slowly through Fantasyland to Adventureland and Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates has its own castle, presumably to accommodate the much longer line — 45 minutes for us. Behind us in line were two French couples, the males of which were what the British call yobbos. One in particular was very funny. We could tell that he was funny because of how amused he was by his own very loud humor. It was all in French, but there was no doubt that it was very loudly funny indeed. We were privileged to enjoy their hilarious antics until we found a wide spot in the line where we could dally until they passed us (along with a few other people as a buffer).
But. Now behind us was a British family who had a girl of about 3 or 4. And it was a long line, and we’d been in it for about a half an hour already, and the girl couldn’t wait another half an hour or so to find a restroom. And the aroma enveloped us. There was much discussion about what to do, as the poop girl (and her family) became more distraught about her situation, but we were all pretty much trapped for another 15 minutes or so until we got to the boats. At that point the family managed to get out, we got in a boat, the French yobbos got in a different boat, and all was well.
Pirates is mostly the same, but has key differences. Like the Anaheim Pirates, there is a restaurant at the beginning of the ride. Anaheim has the Blue Bayou, which has a New Orleans theme, since Pirates is in New Orleans Square. The beginning of the ride goes through the bayou, past the restaurant, then drops down to a lower level where it eventually enters the Caribbean. The Paris restaurant is called the Blue Lagoon and has a Caribbean theme, with palm trees and beaches. Past the restaurant you go up to start the ride itself.
The Paris ride begins with the pirates in jail and the dog holding the key, which is where it ends in Anaheim (and logically where it should end). Further on, you see the pirates firing cannons at the castle from within the castle, looking down on the pirate ship. The central part of the ride is pretty much the same, with only minor differences.
One odd difference is the music. The song A Pirate’s Life for Me is the same, and is even sung in English, except that it contains a few extra bars of instrumentation that I’d never heard before. It was especially noticeable in the castle near the beginning of the ride.
From Pirates we walked through Adventure Isle, which is roughly equivalent to Tom Sawyer’s Island, except that you don’t have to take a raft to get there, then through to Frontierland, where we failed to get into the Lucky Nugget. There was some private show or something, and their regular shows were done for the day. So we went to Phantom Manor.
Phantom Manor is the Paris equivalent of Haunted Mansion, done in Frontierland style rather than New Orleans style, complete with a backstory about the town of Thunder Mesa.
A rich vein of gold was discovered in the red rocks of Big Thunder Mountain, and as soon as word got out, more and more settlers streamed into the area transforming the serene wilderness into a lively and steadily growing gold-rush town!
The year was 1849, and the town would bear the name of Thunder Mesa. Over the following years, railroad cars and riverboats carried more and more prospectors and fortune-hunters into town, each hoping to strike it rich.
The owner of the mine, an industrial baron called Henry Ravenswood, soon founded the Big Thunder Mining Company in order to handle the increasing mining operations in and around the mountain.
For his own family, the increasingly wealthy Henry Ravenswood began construction of a splendid mansion on a hill overlooking the sprawling town. Apart from the four-story manor-house painted in white with a red gable roof, the estate encompassed vast gardens decorated with marble statues and a number of white wood and copper constructions; to the mansion's West side lay the family cemetery.
Once finished, Henry Ravenswood's elaborate new home became the pride of Thunder Mesa, an architectural gem in a rough and increasingly dangerous region. While it was soon joined by a number of other ambitious buildings, none of them could outshine the stately Ravenswood Manor.
Its owner's dearest pride and joy, however, was his beautiful young daughter Melanie. Of fair complexion and auburn hair, she grew up protected, free to pass her time in the expansive manor gardens under Henry's watchful eye.
Indeed, things appeared to be going quite well at Thunder Mesa. A showgirl known as Diamond Lil, who somehow got into possession of an enormous gold nugget, opened a luxurious saloon and dance hall called the Lucky Nugget. The wealthy elite of Thunder Mesa presided in the stately Silver Spur Steakhouse. And even the undertaker J. Nutterville couldn't complain about business.
All of this good fortune, however, was to change just when Melanie Ravenswood was preparing to celebrate her wedding...
In 1860 a terrible earthquake struck the town of Thunder Mesa. Henry Ravenswood and his wife Martha perished in the quake, while the gold mines collapsed in a shower of rubble and rockwork.
But even before this grave event, it would seem that trouble had been brewing at the Ravenswood home. Rumors said that Melanie's suitor planned to take her away from Thunder Mesa, and that Henry was furious! After his tragic demise, it seemed that nothing more would stand in the way of the wedding...
As the day of the wedding arrived, however, the groom was nowhere to be seen. Melanie searched for him throughout the house, but in vain. Heartbroken, she locked herself away -- or so it was thought. Through the windows she was sometimes seen wandering from hall to hall in her wedding dress, candelabra in hand... Some say she was waiting for her groom to return, while others believe that she was kept in the mansion by some evil presence...
In fact, rumors soon spread that Henry Ravenswood himself had returned from the grave to prevent the wedding and to keep his daughter from ever leaving the house. More than one nightly wanderer had walked past the manor only to find a dark shadow looming behind the curtains, or to hear the sound of maniacal laughter echoing through the manor gardens.
Over the years, the manor fell into decay. The inhabitants of Thunder Mesa, too scared to set foot on the estate, began calling it Phantom Manor. There were tales of brave souls who had dared to enter the house and never returned.
The gold vein of Big Thunder Mountain was lost in the earthquake. Attempts to retrieve it in the collapsed mines proved to be as ineffective as they were dangerous.
Without the prospect of getting rich overnight, Thunder Mesa finally regained some of its peace. Steam riverboats lazily made their way up and down the river, while ranchers and farmers settled in nearby Cottonwood Creek.
The biggest difference in the ride is in the cemetery portion, which features a look into Thunder Mesa’s past as it became a ghost town:
Through a hole, the buggies then enter Phantom Canyon, which is a twisted, supernatural version of Thunder Mesa. Rifts in the earth surrounding the buggies suggest that there is an earthquake happening, which reenacts Thunder Mesa's turning point from a prosperous community to a ghost town. An eerie-looking figure stands before a ramshackle train station, offering to sell tickets. Guests see a ruined town hall where a mayor figure stands, inviting guests to be the manor's 1000th ghost. As he tips his hat, his head comes with it. A gun battle scene follows between a bandit, fleeing a bank on a mule, and a cowardly sheriff with Big Thunder Mountain in the background. Guests see a drug store where a green-faced pharmacist figure drinks deadly-looking potions, followed by a saloon whose front wall has caved in. Inside it there are a dancing showgirl, a bartender, and a man playing a honky-tonk piano. Four invisible gambler figures play poker nearby.
The music is also different. The ballroom scene is a wedding, rather than a party, and the waltz is gone, replaced by something more somber. Says Wikipedia:
Phantom Manor takes a different approach to the same concept as the Haunted Mansion attractions. The intended mood is one of corrupted elegance, rather than morbid kookiness. As a result, the soundtrack is different as well. The Mansions feature music that is usually played or sung by characters in the scenery: an organist's waltz, a graveyard band jamboree, and so on. The Manor, however, has a full orchestral soundtrack that takes a more cinematic approach. All of the music is based on "Grim Grinning Ghosts." A variety of instrumentations are used. At various moments, guests hear piano, organ, alto flute, a boy's choir, a jazz band, and a female voice soloist who symbolizes the character of the Bride, all in addition to the ordinary orchestral complement.
We ate an earlyish dinner at the Silver Spur Steak House, then spent about a half an hour climbing around in Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. At about 7:30, we walked across to the other park, Walt Disney Studios. Which had closed at six. That was actually the posted time, but we didn’t have watches, so we didn’t know how late it was.
Back to Disneyland, then, to ride the train around the park. Which was also closed, even though the park itself didn’t close for another hour.
So we looked around in the shops on Main Street, then decided to go to Disney Village to spend money on officially licensed souvenirs. In Anaheim, there is a wide variety of souvenirs for adults as well as children. In Paris, they’re mostly for children, and there’s a smaller assortment even for them.
At about 9:30, we took the train back into Paris, where we proceeded to get lost in the mall adjacent to the Châtelet les Halles station.
August 29
The Cluny Museum and the Batobus Again
After a fairly late start at the St. Michel Starbucks, we walked up to the Cluny Museum.
The Cluny Museum is marked by a big hole in the ground on your left as you walk up St. Michel. It’s the excavation site for Roman baths from the something-or-other century. The entrance to the museum is around a corner to the left.
We activated our museum passes (day 1 of 6) and went in.
The Cluny Museum is built on Roman baths built around 215 AD. People lived in them until the 1330s, when the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny bought the land and converted them into hanging gardens. They’ve continued to accumulate old stuff ever since.
Afterward, we walked back down St. Michel, then detoured slightly to walk down an interesting-looking side street just off of St. Germaine. Rue de la Harpe is a narrow street that angles slightly away from St. Michel, then angles back to intersect it. The street is mostly filled with restaurants. It also has an internet cafe called Milk.
We followed Rue de la Harpe back to St. Michel, then went down to the river to catch the Batobus at the Notre Dame stop. The Batobus is not transportation for people in a hurry, but it’s great for people who don’t have a schedule or a destination or any idea what they’re doing. We rode the entire circuit and I took many highly similar photos of bridges and water.
When we got back to the Notre Dame stop, we went back to St. Michel and I withdrew another 200€ from the ATM. We then wandered back to Rue de la Harpe to get something to eat.
One of the noteworthy aspects of pedestrian areas full of highly competitive eating establishments is that the proprietors of the less popular establishments tend to lunge at you from their doorways, accosting you in whatever language seems appropriate and insisting that their particular establishment can provide anything you might conceivably want in a dining experience. Often they will read the entire menu to you. My visceral reaction is to flee from such people.
We fled several times and were finally hungry enough to get gyros and Coke from a Greek place. This had a walk-up counter and seemed like it would be simpler. It probably was, though not as simple as we expected, since getting change required a certain amount of discussion and confusion and finally someone who emerged from a hole in the floor. But we got it all sorted out and took our gyros to Pont Neuf, which seemed like it would be a pleasant place to eat.
And it would have been, but by the time we got there the food was no longer warm and neither were we. Still, how often do you get to have gyros on Pont Neuf? It doesn’t hurt to do that at least once, no matter the temperature.
August 30
The Rodin Museum
With two days remaining on our Batobus passes, we floated out to the Eiffel Tower stop and walked to the Rodin Museum.
The Rodin Museum is in Rodin’s former home, which is a mansion on about an acre of land. Many of the larger sculptures are outside. Also outside is a cafe, where we had an early lunch, since we hadn’t eaten anything yet.
We split a sandwich nordique, which is a smoked salmon sandwich on a baguette, and was good enough for us to go back later and get another one.
Japanese art display
Afterward, we wandered around to the Army Museum. There’s too much war to take in in a single visit, but we got to experience both world wars, which flow gracefully into one grim whole. Overall, it’s excellently done, though it does skimp a bit on France’s non-response to Germany just before the war.
We had intended to go to Napoleon’s tomb, but it was closed. The building, I mean. Also the tomb itself. France’s own little Hitler will have to wait for another trip.
We walked around the Ecole Militaire and up the Place du Champs de Mars to catch the Batobus back. While we were on the boat, Mom had one of her 20-minute psychedelic migraines, so we rode a bit farther to give it time to pass. That meant getting off two stops later at Hotel de Ville on the other side of the river. From there we walked across to St. Michel and up to Quick for chicken wings, then down to the Internet cafe, where I sent taunting email.
August 31
Le Defense and the Pompidou Center
We got a fairly early start and walked to the Louvre Rivoli station to take the Metro to La Defense. Louvre Rivoli is done up in Egyptian tomb style, complete with some sort of dead pharaoh or something.
We got off at Esplanade de la Defense and walked up the long gradual incline toward the Grande Arche. I knew there was a Starbucks here somewhere, but had no idea where. However, Starbucks being Starbucks, it was fairly obvious, so we were able to get something to eat before starving. (As it turns out, there are two Starbuxen, but we didn’t know about the other one until later.)
La Defense is one of one of those Grand Technocratic Visions that send inspire countries to emulate US economic success by erecting similar buildings. If it looks like Chicago or New York, it should be as successful as Chicago or New York. This works about as well as you would expect.
La Defense has been more successful than most such areas, partly because France was fairly successful already and partly because the French government subsidized the bejabbers out of it. Today it’s probably notable for scenes in the Jacques Tati film Playtime, as well as one brief scene in The Bourne Identity.
The name makes it sound like some kind of fortress, but it was named after a statue commemorating the defense of Paris during the Siege of 1870. The statue is probably still around somewhere, but we didn’t see it.
The weather was alternately sunny and cloudy and eventually turned very cloudy, which sort of spoiled most pictures. The place is visually impressive, though, so I took plenty of pictures anyway.
There’s a large mall in La Defense, though it was undergoing construction work and it wasn’t immediately obvious where to enter. Mom wanted to get a sweatshirt, but got nail polish remover instead. You have to be flexible.
Many of the places we visited had soldiers, usually walking in groups of three, carrying automatic rifles, and looking supremely bored. Most of these places were tourist spots that would be obvious terrorist targets, such as the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. For some reason, they were also in this mall. I took a picture of them, and a few seconds later a woman came running over to me and said something to me in French. I couldn’t tell exactly what she was saying, but the gist of it was that I wasn’t supposed to take pictures of the soldiers. Or possibly of anything in the mall. I’m not real sure. At first I thought she was some official-type person, but she didn’t arrest me or seize my camera, so I think she was just warning me. And maybe she didn’t even know what she was talking about, but I put the camera away until we got outside again.
If, as Rick Steves says, Montparnasse Tower looks like the box the Eiffel Tower came in, then the Grande Arche looks like the box the Arc de Triomphe came in. It’s basically a pair of office buildings connected by a giant cross-beam. Tourists can go up to the cross-beam in a stylish glass pod that looks a bit Jules-Verney and really doesn’t fit the boxy 1970s modernism of the building itself. The ride to the top costs a very grande 8€25 per person.
There’s plenty of room at the top, and it seemed like there wasn’t quite enough to fill it with. There were two temporary art displays, a computer display, a restaurant, a small theater, a gift shop, and a fair amount of empty space. Next to the gift shop is a row of doors leading to steps up the toit de la Grande Arche. From there you can see across La Defense to the Arc de Triomphe. The view of the Eiffel Tower is marred somewhat by the position of Montparnasse Tower, but otherwise it’s an impressive view.
The center of this internal area is largely taken up with an art display by someone named Dimitri. He is a painter of the unexpected, master of distorted perspectives, and maestro of the three-dimensional iconography. Or so it says on his web site. His main display is of what he calls remanensce paintings, which are basically elaborate negatives. You stare at them for about 30 seconds, then look at a blank space, and you can see the positive that the negative is a negative of. He also has a nice display of anaglyph images tucked away in a hallway near the restrooms.
The computer display had a good assortment of early PCs and accessories, with explanations in both French and bizarre English. Included was a Minitel terminal from about 1980 that looked almost exactly like the one in our apartment. They apparently haven’t changed much in 27 years.
There’s a little theater where we watched a 20-minute film (in French) about the history of the Grande Arche.
We tried to eat lunch at the cafe, which is supposed to have an excellent view and is less expensive than the rather classy restaurant. However, we decided not to, since it apparently doesn’t exist. The restaurant is it, and it’s very pricey and has no view. I don’t know where I read about that cafe. Maybe I dreamed it. Anyway, we went back down and ate at a sandwich place in the mall called Elefantos. Despite the name, they don’t serve elephant.
We took the Metro back to Châtelet station and felt our way to Pompidou Center. The Pompidou Center doesn’t face a major street, and the smaller streets in the area are not all well marked, so it took some wandering and backtracking to find it. For a large building with external escalators, it’s tucked away pretty effectively.
Getting into the building is easy. Once inside, however, it’s not obvious where to go. After riding up and down the escalators and doing a little wandering, we finally found the main exhibits.
Modern art really isn’t all that modern anymore. With much of it, all there is is novelty, and when that wears off, there’s nothing left. There were a few interesting paintings, some nice home design, and a red rhinocerous, but the rest of it didn’t call for much scrutiny.
And Slot was nowhere to be seen.
By late afternoon we were going through the usual strain of deciding where to eat. It seems odd to have trouble deciding where to eat in Paris, but when you’re not familiar with any of it, there isn’t much to base a decision on. I suggested a place called Dame Tartine, because it was right next to the Pompidou Center and because Dame Tartine is the name of a song on Gisele MacKenzie’s Dominique LP.
Dame Tartine is next to the Stravinsky Fountain. It’s a small cafe with a few tables outside. We unwisely chose to sit outside, even though it was starting to get cold. There I had the Worst Beer Ever. It was called Monaco. It was raspberry-flavored and so overwhelmingly sweet that I couldn’t finish it. Mom seemed to like it, though, and finished it off for me.
On the way back, we passed some tourist shops and Mom tried again to get a sweatshirt. This time she succeeded. The shopkeeper was an Indian girl who had just arrived in Paris and spoke no French. No problem with English, though, and Mom got a blue sweatshirt with the Eiffel Tower on it.
On the way to the Pompidou Center we had passed a small grocery store, so we went back the same way and stopped at the store for some various necessities and non-necessities.
Bumpersticker: “No Birds — No Dirt on My Jeep!”
On the way across Pont Neuf, we stopped to see if the Eiffel Tower was going to light up. It didn’t. And since I didn’t have a sweatshirt, we went back to the apartment.
A group of French girls were crossing the bridge and practicing English with each other. One said, “Talk with my hand!” Then she corrected herself: “Talk to my hand!” It’s important to get your prepositions right.
September 1
The Louvre and Passages
Time for the Louvre. There’s no way to see the whole thing in a day, or even a week, so we opted for the Rick Steves tour. It focuses on the Denon Wing, which is roughly a third of the whole museum. Even at that it’s sort of an endurance event.
We started with Starbucks, where I finally managed to put all the pieces together to order a chai latte in French:
Un moyen chai latte, ecreme, sans mousse, s’il vous plait.
You don’t have to order it extra hot because it is already. Apparently juries don’t award huge cash settlements to stupid people who pour hot drinks on themselves in France.
The tour began with the early (pre-Classical) Greek room, which featured primitive hopping gods, early Nazis, ancient loos, and the Greek origin of the word “okay.” At least that’s what I got out of it.
From there we headed up some stairs to one of the two biggest attractions of the Louvre: Venus de Milo. She stood serenely, better-behaved than most celebrities, surrounded by packs of admiring tourists. There’s a white screen behind her so you can take pictures without background distractions, but there’s nearly always someone standing between her and the screen, so it’s not really that helpful.
Venus had been moved since the Rick Steves guidebook was written, so following his directions on where to go next led us into a wall. It was a little tricky figuring out where Venus now was relative to where she used to be, then where to go from there, but we finally got it, and headed through rooms of Classical Greek statues to Winged Victory. And her finger.
Then there were the Romans. The Romans liked statues of emperors, and made plenty of them. They’re very nice, but they get old quickly.
The Apollo Gallery features the crown jewels and assorted royal housewares. Very fancy.
Then through some rooms of medieval paintings and into….The Grand Gallery.
The Grand Gallery is not just the place where that guy in the Da Vinci Code staggered around melodramatically and then died. It’s also the location of what is probably the most famous painting in the world: Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, or the Mona Lisa (as men have named her).
Although it is one of the world’s great paintings, it’s fame, rather than artistic merit, that makes it such a huge draw. The Mona Lisa is almost certainly the most famous painting in the world, due largely to how well known it is. According to Donald Sassoon, author of Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon:
"It's a very special painting, so Raphael and other people copied it. And it was by Leonardo. And it was in Paris. And intellectuals wrote about it. And it got stolen [in 1911]. And [artist Marcel] Duchamp made fun of it. And it visited the United States. And each is due to the thing before. It gets stolen because it was pretty well known; then Duchamp puts a mustache on it, because he needs something that everybody knows; it gets sent to New York and Washington, because it is a popular painting; it is used in advertising because it was sent all over."
And at the Louvre you can buy Mona flip-flops. That just wouldn’t work with Picasso’s Guernica.
The Grand Gallery is impressive in its own right. It was built in the 1500s to connect the old palace with the Tuillieries palace, and is about 230 yards of paintings, punctuated with round couches to collapse on.
From there it was French Neoclassicism, French Romanticism, more Italian Renaissance, and out to the food court for rotisseried chicken and Lebonese food.
My Cadogan guide describes a walk through some of Paris’ passages, which happened to be near the Louvre, so after lunch we went out to wander through them. The passages were forerunners to modern malls.
We went through the Galerie Vero Dodat, which was named after the two butchers who developed it in 1826. From there we walked past the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication building, which was covered with odd metalwork.
Near an ornate Metro station we bought postcards, then walked past through the Jardins du Palais Royal. On the other side were Galerie Colbert and Galerie Vivienne. Colbert had an intimidating-looking guard in front of it, so we went through the Vivienne instead. Also built in the 1820s, this seemed more populated than Vero Dodat.
We cut the walk short at this point, although we still had to walk all the way back to the apartment. We stopped once to withdraw some more money (this ATM gave an assortment of denominations) and a little later to rest in front of St. Germaine l'Auxerrois. This church was the scene of the beginning of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, but it’s pretty quiet now.
We eventually made it back to the apartment, where a music video taping was in progress. Not in the apartment, but pretty close. Across the street in a shop window.
After resting for a while, headed out to St. Germaine in search of food. We hadn’t gone far when we saw some commotion in a square across the street. While we were trying to figure out what was going on, some guy came up to us and told us it was capoiella. It didn’t look like it, but we couldn’t really see it very well. The guy said he was from Porta Alegre, Brazil, and was in Paris to study journalism. We stood and talked to him for probably about a half an hour, or rather, he talked to us. We’d probably still be there if he hadn’t gotten a phone call from Brazil.
After walking for a while and failing to decide where we wanted to eat, we got to St. Michel and ended up at Quick pretty much by default. Afterward, we went back to the Internet cafe to check email.
September 2
Notre Dame, The Latin Quarter, and Montparnasse Tower
After the usual breakfast at Starbuck on St. Michel, we went straight to the bird market.
We didn’t really mean to, but we were on our way to Notre Dame and there it was. Birds. And bird supplies. The reason, I assume, is that there isn’t enough space in most Paris apartments for larger pets. Though it doesn’t explain why people buy their birds at a weekly outdoor market, rather than at a bird store. Was this a bird exchange? Were they black market birds? Were they hot?
The answers to these questions would have to be cavalierly ignored, because we had Notre Dame to get to, and so we did. Once there, we discovered two things. First, the line to go up in the bell tower was really long. Second, the tower didn’t open until 10:00, even though the guidebook said 9:30. Mom wasn’t interested in climbing 400 steps anyway, so I decided to do the tower another time and we went in the main part of the church.
Church was in session. Or mass. Whatever they call it. Anyway, they don’t stop the tours for that, so tourists file around the edges of the room while services go on in the middle and people in robes march around with religious doodads while the organ plays.
And the organ is loud. It’s a giant pipe organ playing dramatic chords in a room with a lot of resonance. It was probably designed to scare the bajabbers out of the sinful and I’m sure it was, and is, very effective. It played the whole time we were in there and lent an air of drama to our meandering.
But Notre Dame is not just full of drama and history. It’s also full of ways for tourists and pilgrims to spend money. You can buy commemorative tokens (2€), candles to burn for some reason or other (2€), candles you can take with you (5€), and prayer cards (not sure how much those were). At both the entrance and exit, folks from the Order of Malta were holding out baskets for donations. Whether you’re there for sightseeing, worship, or shopping, Notre Dame has something for you.
In front of Notre Dame is a large square where tourists mill about, trying to take pictures that don’t have tourists in them. The square dates to the 19th century when Baron Hausmann created the modern Paris look by cutting large swaths through various parts of the city and displacing tens of thousands of people. The square in front of Notre Dame cleared out 25,000 people and razed the buildings they’d lived in.
I had intended to go up in the tower, but it wasn’t sunny and the line was long, so I didn’t.
Below Place du Parvis is the Archeological Crypt, where construction workers discovered the 3rd-century wall of Lutetia, ruins of Roman and medieval houses, the Merovingian cathedral, 17th-century cellars, and the foundation of an 18th-century hospital. What was planned to be an underground parking garage became a museum. It’s not as extensive as it sounds, but it was still interesting. We probably spent about 45 minutes down there.
Walking through churches and ruins requires gelato, so we went back to Amorino’s, then sat down by the river for a while.
Afterward, we followed Rick Steves’ Historic Paris Walk, which starts at Notre Dame (including the Archeological Crypt and Point Zero), and meanders down the Left Bank and into the Latin Quarter. We paused a bit at Robinier, an acacia tree that was planted in 1602. It’s leaning and bedraggled, but still hanging in there. Around the corner from Robinier is La Guillotine Pub, which is supposed to have an original guillotine from 1792 on the wall. The pub was closed, though, and we couldn’t see anything guillotine-like through the window.
Back on the Left Bank, Mom filled up her water bottle at the fountain in front of Shakespeare & Co., then we turned in from the river toward St. Severin, named after the famous wizard Severus Snape. Or so I assume. Anyway, it’s an old church with many gargoyles.
We followed the windy streets past St. Severin until we got to St. Michel, then departed from the Rick Steves walk and headed up St. Michel toward Luxembourg Gardens. We had been there once before, but I had failed to find the original Statue of Liberty, so we had to go back. Besides, it was on the way to Montparnasse Tower.
The first Statue of Liberty was cast by Bartholdi in 1870. Blah blah blah history. I took a few pictures with bad lighting and background, and a few other pictures of a guy playing petanque, then we left for Montparnasse Tower.
It’s a bit of a walk, but not hard to find. The trick is getting into it. It’s set back from Boulevard du Montparnasse, behind a mall. There are streets on both sides of the mall and tower, and it’s not obvious which one to follow, or even if it matters. One side had construction, though, so we went down the other side, which turned out to be right. Still, the entrance wasn’t obvious until we got right up to the building.
Rick Steves describes Montparnasse Tower as the box the Eiffel Tower came in, which is about right. There’s nothing at all noteworthy about the building except that it’s tall and it’s standing off by itself. The only reason to visit it is to go to the top, which we did.
In 38 seconds, the elevator takes you up 56 floors to a spacious viewing area that extends all the way around the building. We wandered around for a while and I took pictures through the polarized windows. Then I walked up the stairs to the roof.
The roof is simply a large flat area with a helipad and antennas around the edge. There’s a guard shack and some window-washing equipment. It was cloudy and cold and I took some pictures and went down again.
We walked back to the Metro at Montparnasse Bienvenüe station, then rode back to St. Michel. From there we walked through Rue de la Huchette to La Dolce Vita, a pizza place we’d seen earlier. After dinner, we spent some time in the Internet cafe, then walked back to the apartment.
Passed an Apple Store, dawdled on Pont Neuf.
Pont Neuf means “New Bridge,” which it was at the time it was built in 1605. In time, however, it’s become older, and is now the oldest bridge in Paris. They still call it the New Bridge, though, because after all this time the name is as old as the bridge itself.
Says Cadogan: “Reliefs and grotesques decorate the Pont Neuf as seen from the river, portraying the pickpockets, charlatans and tooth extractors who used to harangue, amuse and prey on the passing crowds. For throughout the 17th century, the bridge was the place to see and be seen in Paris. When the police sought a suspect, they would post an agent on the bridge, and if after three days they failed to spot their man they assumed he wasn’t in Paris. A big attraction was the singers of satirical and anti-government ditties (the Pont Neuf was the only place where they were tolerated). Strollers could hire parasols at either end of the bridge, a sybaritic touch that shocked foreign visitors.
“The Pont Neuf had the first raised pavement in Paris, a much appreciated innovation in the mucky era when decrotteurs (shoe and stocking de-turders) did a brisk business. It was also the first bridge without houses or shops, and opened up a view down the length of the Seine that enchanted Parisians.
September 3
Pere Lachaise
Today I decided not to carry my camera. The bag weighs about five pounds and I wanted to give my shoulder a rest for a day.
We mixed things up a little in the morning. Instead of going to the Starbucks on St. Michel for a chai latte, we went to the other Starbucks on St. Michel for a chai latte. It’s on the other side of the street and everything.
Since it was Monday, we went to a tabac to get Metro cards. The Carte l’Orange hebdomadaire allows unlimited Metro and bus access for one week, Monday through Sunday. You have to provide a passport-sized photo, which Mom already had. I had previously gotten one in a photo booth at St. Michel station. We stopped at a tabac on St. Michel and I asked for a Carte l’Orange. There was some confusion at first, since she thought I said Gaulois and tried to give me cigarettes, but eventually I got the cards. We then went to the St. Michel station to get them validated.
The Rick Steves guidebook recommends riding the #69 bus as a sightseeing tour culminating at Père Lachaise Cemetery. That sounded good, especially since the bus involved sitting. But first we had to get to the start of the line, so we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower, then walked about a half mile to the bus stop. The bus arrived in about 15 minutes and we were off.
It’s basically a pleasant ride through various Paris neighborhoods on both sides of the Seine, culminating two blocks from the Porte Gambetta entrance to the cemetery, which seems to be the back. Mostly following the Rick Steves walking tour, we wandered through the treeful cemetery on problematic cobblestones.
Most of the monuments on the tour were easy enough to find. Oscar Wilde’s was especially garish and covered with lipstick. But down two or three stones from Wilde was a monument that wasn’t in any of my guidebooks. Joseph Spiess was the inventor of the rigid airship (as opposed to balloons) and his monument has a bas relief of a Spiess airship.
In the far back corner are some larger monuments, nearly all of which commemorate various groups killed during the Nazi holocaust. It kind of sneaks up on you. One moment you’re looking at the ornate tomb of some obscure 19th-century French person and the next moment you’re surrounded by towering sculptures symbolizing the deaths of millions of people. Immediately adjacent to the holocaust monuments is the Communards Wall.
Before they were a 1980s pop duo, the communards were a bunch of communists who took over a region of Paris and sort of governed it for several years. Eventually, they were wiped out by the Armée versaillaise, with the last few hundred being killed in the cemetery and their bodies thrown into an open trench.
I thought cemeteries were supposed to be cheerier than this.
I rarely go out, but when I do wander,
I go to cheer myself up in Père Lachaise
Honoré de Balzac, 1819
Easy for him to say in 1819. Pretty depressing now.
Mom found several buckeyes, which was surprising, since we didn’t know that there were buckeye trees in France. Turns out there aren’t, but there are some closely related species called Horse Chestnuts, which is probably what these were. A Horse Chestnut is neither a type of chestnut nor a type of horse, but there you are. Horse Chestnuts also line the Champs-Elysées.
On many of the tombstones was the stenciled notice “concession à perpétuité,” which means that the land is purchased, rather than leased for a period of years.
Monuments we missed: Joseph Fourier, Stéphane Grappelli, Auguste Parmentier, and Allan Kardec. Of that last one, the Cadogan guidebook says:
Kardec, born Leon Rivail in 1804, was one of the fathers of 19th-century spiritualism. His followers are still numerous enough, in Paris, to keep up a near-permanent vigil around the flower-bedecked shrine. Don’t fool with these people; they will come after you if you hang around too long, or if you try to photograph the tomb. But take time to notice the incredible notice posted behind Kardec by the City of Paris, a calm and reasoned philosophical tract warning against the folly of adoring the remains of a mortal being.
They should put that by Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, too.
We also missed Victor Hugo, which Rick Steves incorrectly states is buried in Père Lachaise. He’s actually buried in the Pantheon.
We did of course see Jim Morrison’s grave. You can’t not. It’s not that easy to get to, but we followed what little foot traffic there was until we found the guard. From there it didn’t take much looking to find the small throng of punks, goths, and hippies worshipping at the shrine.
There was a friendly cat sitting on a nearby tombstone, making me wish I’d brought my camera for about the 16th time that day.
We eventually found our way out of the cemetery through the main entrance and walked down Rue de la Roquette. Rick Steves made it sound like the bus stop was close, but it was actually quite a walk. On the way we passed a park with an enormous wooden birdhouse in front of it. The house itself must have been eight feet tall and was on top of a post that was maybe six feet. It was a house for pigeons. Why anyone would make a house for pigeons was not clear. It was a very nice house, though.
We took bus #69 back to Hôtel de Ville station, which, conveniently, is right next to Quick. So we got fries and Cokes.
Afterward, we walked back to the apartment, did some laundry, and rested for a while.
That evening, we walked to St. Germaine and, after some dithering, decided to eat at Indiana Cafe. Indiana Cafe has nothing at all to do with Indiana and everything to do with American Indians. The walls are lined with photos by Edward Curtis, Indian-themed advertising of the early 20th century, and anything else that seems to fit in. The food is described as Tex-Mex, but is mostly just Southwestern. Quite good, too.
We sat downstairs, which was a non-smoking area. At the next table was a man in a suit accompanied by a couple in their early 20s who were…odd. Especially the girl. Neither one of them acted like they’d been in a restaurant before and cleaned their plates with unusual fervor. The girl even spent some time licking her knife. They didn’t seem unhealthy or rusticly dressed, and they acted more like juvenile delinquents than people from a poor village somewhere. At one point the guy in the suit (who didn’t seem much older) seemed to be explaining to them what a credit card was. The girl had a couple of bags from Printemps. They would have been more entertaining if they’d left sooner.
September 4
Brussels
If one is foolish enough to get 6:25 train tickets from Paris to Brussels, one has to get up much earlier to catch the train than one was really considering, given that one wasn’t considering it at all, but was apparently just expecting to wake up in the train station all ready to go.
But that’s okay. We made it out the door and down to St. Michel where we caught the Metro to Gare du Nord and got into the station just fine. And then couldn’t figure out where to go. Our various guidebooks emphasized how important it was to get there ahead of time. You could lose your seat if you don’t. Very strict, blah blah blah.
Well, they’re not. At least not for the train we were on, which wasn’t the train that I thought we were on, whose long line we were standing in. That train was the Eurostar, which does go from Paris to Brussels, but only if you’re riding through from London. If you’re getting on in Paris, you can only go to London, and for that you have to go through some customs thing, which is why the line was so long.
So I went through the ticket line, which was shorter, and learned that we didn’t have to stand in line at all. We just had to find our train (a Thalys) on the Departures board and go to the right platform. Just like you’d expect for a train station.
However, I had looked around when we arrived and I didn’t see anything on the board that looked like a 6:25 train to Brussels. And now it was after 6:00. A person can get nervous in a situation like this.
And just as we were looking at the board, the departure list changed and our train was listed. It was, in fact, waiting at the platform right next to us.
So we got on.
The Thalys can travel at a top speed of 186 mph. I don’t know if it reached that speed on our trip, but it went to 185-mile distance in one hour and 22 minutes, for an average speed of 135 mph. We must have been going faster than that at some point. It didn’t feel like it, though, since the tracks are designed for high-speed trains and don’t have the curves you would expect with, say, a narrow-gauge.
The train trip was everything that air travel isn’t. It was comfortable, quiet, simple, and pleasant, with pleasant announcements in several languages.
After a little while we walked back the dining car and ordered croissants and tea from a guy from Brooklyn. No Brooklyn accent, fortunately; I don’t know how that would have translated into French.
Everything went smoothly and efficiently at Gare du Midi right up to the moment we got off the train. The plan was simple enough — take the Metro to a station near the Grand’ Place. Gare Central or Bourse would do fine.
I started by going to the information booth, but it didn’t open for another hour, and it wasn’t for Metro-related questions anyway. But how hard could it be? There were signs and maps; we’d just follow those like we did in Paris. So we followed a sign that said Metro and went down an escalator to another platform, where there Metro lines that seemed to go somewhere else. We went down another escalator to another platform that Metro lines to a different somewhere else. There were maps posted, but they had every type of line imaginable: Thalys, Metro, streetcar, bus, roads, colorful marks that didn’t seem to be labeled, etc. It was unreadable tangle.
We wandered thus for a while when I noticed we were being followed closely by a dwarf. She was behind me and slightly to one side. I made sure I had a firm grip on my camera bag and slowed down. She slowed down, too. I turned around. She scampered away, muttering and giggling.
Nothing was missing, so we continued our quest to find basic transportation into town. We went upstairs and out the front of the building to see if there were buses into town. There were buses, but no indication where they might be heading, so we went back inside and wandered around some more. I think we might have looped around through the Metro platforms again, but I’m not sure. At one point the dwarf showed up behind us again, giggled, then scooted away. It was turning into some sort of surrealist play.
Finally, during one of our loops, the information booth opened up. The man in the booth didn’t seem to understand why we were asking such a stupid question, but directed us to the platform that we’d arrived on. There was, it seemed, a different train that would take us into Gare Central at no additional cost. Nothing about that was posted anywhere that I ever saw, but once we knew about this undocumented feature, we got to Gare Central with no further difficulty.
Of course, we still had to get from Gare Central to the Grand’ Place. We found our way out of the station, but none of the streets matched the map. And we had no way of knowing which way we were facing relative to the Grand’ Place. So proceeding on the theory that the Grand’ Place would be downhill from us, toward what looked like an older area with narrower streets, we headed down the hill.
Before long we encountered the Manneken-Pis. He was wearing a Belgian infantry uniform and peeing contentedly. Or at least continuously. The Manneken-Pis has hundreds of costumes, stored in a nearby museum, and wears them on appropriate occasions.
The Grand’ Place itself is only a few blocks from the Manneken-Pis. You emerge from narrow medieval streets into a large open space surrounded by tall ornate guild buildings that appear to be from the 15th century. The Hôtel de Ville (city hall) was built in the 15th century, but it’s the only one. The surrounding guildhouses date from the 16th century, but were mostly destroyed by French artillery a century later. The French were aiming for the Hôtel de Ville, which was just about the only thing they missed. The guild houses were rebuilt in a retro style so that everything looks like it's been there since the 15th century.
We arrived at around 9:30 or so and everything was just opening. The flower market (a couple of stalls in the middle of the square) were getting setting up and a few tourists were stumbling around looking up at the buildings.
I thought the Medieval Centre walking tour in my Cadogan guide sounded like a good idea. It would take us to the highlights of the area around the Grand’ Place. But unless construction sites count as Medieval highlights, the tour fell a bit short. We made it past the construction to the Galeries Royales St-Hubert, an arcade built in 1847 with an 18-meter-high glass canopy. It was kind of impressive, but also kind of empty. We decided to shorten the tour and cut across to Boulevard Anspach, which seemed to be the main road through the center of town. The modern center, that is, not the medieval one.
Most curious sight along the boulevard: a building facade held up and preserved while the building behind it was torn down. There seems to be specialized facade-propping equipment for such a task.
We walked a few blocks further and were dithering in front of the Bourse (stock exchange) when an old man asked us if we needed directions. We didn’t really, because we weren’t trying to get anywhere in particular, but he gave us some anyway. And then proceeded to talk to us for a half hour or so.
He was 87 years old and spoke six languages. We neglected to ask him which six languages, but they certainly included English, Dutch, and French. He was born in Indonesia when it was a Dutch colony, and opined that colonialism made Indonesia rich, and that their independence had made them poor. Similarly with African countries. (I didn’t mention that the US was also a former colony and did pretty well after independence.)
He had lived in the US, getting his first job as a hotel bellboy in New York in 1931. He had never retired, but was still employed in some way, although it wasn’t clear what he did. It was a weekday morning, he was carrying shopping bags, and he didn’t seem in any hurry. So whatever he did wasn’t too demanding.
He suggested we go to the Place St-Géry a couple blocks away, which turned out not to be much, partly due to ongoing renovation and partly due to the time of day. So we walked back toward the Bourse.
And speaking of the Bourse, that’s a term I had never heard. It’s simply a stock exchange, but why is it called a bourse? According to Wikipedia:
Some stories suggest that the origins of the term "bourse" come from the Latin bursa meaning a bag because, in 13th century Bruges, the sign of a purse (or perhaps three purses), hung on the front of the house where merchants met. However, it is more likely that in the late 13th century commodity traders in Bruges gathered inside the house of a man called Van der Burse, and in 1309 they institutionalized this until now informal meeting and became the "Bruges Bourse". The idea spread quickly around Flanders and neighbouring counties and "Bourses" soon opened in Ghent and Amsterdam.
Still not really knowing what we were doing, we walked back to the Grand’ Place and found the tourist office in the Hôtel de Ville (which wasn’t open when we were there earlier). There we learned that:
They also gave us a map.
We got lunch at a pizza place just off the Grand’ Place, because nothing says Belgium like pizza and Coke. Then we headed back to Gare Central to catch a tram.
Which wasn’t there. The station itself was in an advanced state of disarray due to construction, so the fact that we didn’t see any tram signs was not an immediate indication that there weren’t any. As with Gare du Midi, Gare Central had no shortage of signs, but none of them were helpful in any way. We finally stood in line and asked someone at the ticket counter, who told us that trams didn’t leave from Gare Central. The Metro was available, but the line that went the Atomium didn’t leave from Gare Central. And the Atomium was where we wanted to go. So we went to the nearby De Bruckère station, where we managed to catch the Metro to the Atomium without incident or drama.
The Atomium itself is an enormous steel vision of a Jetsonesque future. At 335 feet, it’s easily the world’s largest model of an iron molecule — nine giant iron atoms connected by escalators. The primary difference being that at the molecular level, there are no fire escapes.
It was built for the Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles in 1958, when the Belgian metal industry was noteworthy and a giant iron molecule made a certain amount of sense. Now it’s pure kitsch, but it’s impressive kitsch, with vertigo-inducing stairs and escalators, weirdly lit rooms, viewing areas, and ice cream in colorful refrigerators.
We wandered, we took pictures, we ate ice cream, we bought souvenirs. There isn’t really anything to do there, but I’d still like to go back.
From the Atomium we took the #23 tram back through town. Unlike the Metro, the tram is mostly above ground, makes frequent stops, and is a pleasant way to see Brussels while sitting down.
Everything in Brussels looks either really old or modern as of a few decades ago. It’s like they had construction booms in 1690 and 1960 and not much in between. This probably had more to do with the route we happened to take than any deliberate aspect of Brussels architecture, Brussels does have a lot of Art Nouveau architecture that we didn’t see, but it did create an interesting dichotomy, of which I unfortunately have no pictures.
Other oddities: a statue of Winston Churchill, murals of comic-book characters such at Tin Tin, and a copy shop with 13 nearly identical signs.
When the tram arrived at Gare du Midi, we took the #4 Metro line back to Bourse station, which we could have easily done that morning if we’d only known. From the Bourse, it was a three-block walk back to the Grand’ Place, and just about time for supper.
We ate at the Brussels Tavern in the La Brouette (The Wheelbarrow) building, of which the guidebook says:
Here you’ll see the forerunners of the wheelbarrow pictured over the door. This building belonged to the tallow merchants, demonstrating their power in the days before petrol-based lubricants and electric lighting. A statue (1912) of their patron saint, St Gilles, stands over the gable. Although the building is dated 1697, referring to restoration work carried out by the architect-sculptor Jan Cosyns, much of the original facade survived the bombing of 1695.
I tried some of the famed Belgian beer (Mort Subite, a Gueuze beer), which was sort of pungent and odd-tasting, but much better than Monaco or 1634.
After dinner, we wandered a bit — around the Grand’ Place, up and down Boulevard Anspach, back to the Grand’ Place again — mostly looking for a good place to get chocolate. There was no shortage of such places, but many of them were closed. I finally got a few boxes at a Leonidas shop off the Grand’ Place on Rue au Beurre. Mom bought an umbrella nearby.
We took the Metro from Bourse station back to Gare du Midi, then killed time waiting for the train back to Paris. How much time is impossible to tell. Time has no meaning in Gare du Midi, despite all the clocks. We ate chicken wings at Quick, took pictures of Tin Tin train posters, watched a drunk guy get corralled by security people, and sat around a lot. Then we waited on the platform for a while.
The train back was much more crowded, but the trip was uneventful. From Gare du Nord we took the Metro back, getting off at Cite rather than our usual station of St Michel. I don’t remember why, since St Michel would have been a little closer, but it must have seemed like a good idea for some reason. It’s worth noting, however, that a) there are quite a lot of steps from the Cite platform up to the street, and b) the public restrooms close at 11:00.
But the day’s main lesson is that enjoyment of Brussels is inversely proportional to time spent in Gare du Midi.
September 5
Musée d'Orsay and the Phantom Ferris Wheel
We didn’t get up early. I don’t know what time we got to Starbucks, but it was almost late enough to be lunch. Then we took the Metro to Musée d'Orsay.
Musée d'Orsay was originally Gare d'Orsay, which closed in 1961 and sat empty for years until it turned into one of those deliriously expensive building projects of the Mitterand era. It contains art from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which is most of what people have heard of or would recognize: Renoir, van Gogh, Monet, that Birth of Venus guy — they’re all there. There was even a very cool model of the Opera district of Paris as it was in 1875. The model is beneath glass blocks in the floor so you can walk over it. That and the art nouveau furniture were probably my favorite parts of the museum.
Starbucks food isn’t really enough to carry a person through the day, so we ate at the museum cafe, even though it was already mid-afternoon. The cafe is really two cafes in one. There’s a regular restaurant behind one of the giant clocks that you can see through, and there’s also a fairly good selection of pre-made sandwiches and such that you can take to the uncomfortable seating overlooking the restaurant. Decent enough food, but we had to leave before the stools cut off the circulation to our legs.
Adjacent to the cafe was a long deck overlooking the Seine, so we went out there for a while and took some pictures.
Mom was obsessed with the Paris ferris wheels, one of which was supposedly permanent and the other seasonal. The seasonal one was easy enough to find. It was in the Tuilleries and we had ridden it when we first arrived in Paris. The other one was nowhere to be found. I had googled some information that said that it had been moved to Bangkok a couple of years previously, which suggested that it was not really all that permanent after all. It was also gone.
Until we walked out on the deck and looked across the river and there it was. It still wasn’t permanent, but it was no longer gone. In fact, it was prominently place in the Place de la Concorde.
We spent some more time in the museum, then crossed the river to either ride the ferris wheel or expose it as a mirage. We crossed at Pont Solférino, a footbridge which opened amidst controversy in 1999, then closed again and reopened the following year. It’s a split-level bridge, with the levels joining at the top. At the other end were gypsies. “Excuse me, do you speak English?” Désolé, non. And get a new shtick.
The ferris wheel was set up for the Rugby World Cup, which was set to start in a few days. France was not favored to win (and in fact they didn’t), but it was a big deal and there were suddenly rugby signs and promotions everywhere. Each of the ferris wheels cars (buckets? pods?) had the logo of one of the teams on it. We got France.
The ferris wheel was well positioned for views down the Champs-Elysées toward the Arc de Triomphe, across the Tuilleries toward the Louvre, and over the Seine.
Next we evaded the gypsies and went into the Tuilleries. The fountains there, as elsewhere in Paris, have plastic chairs around them, so we sat for a while. Nearby was a girl feeding the pigeons. She wasn’t just tossing food to them, either. She was holding the food up and they were swarming around her. Occasionally there would be too many and she would brush them off.
After watching the pigeon girl for a while, we walked through the Tuilleries to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel at the other end. This is basically the Arc de Triomphe Jr. It was built to celebrate one of Napoleon’s victories somewhere, as so many of these arches seem to be. There seems to be something to celebrate most of his battles. Except Waterloo. (That would have to be a fallen arch.)
We had dinner in Le Food Court, then walked back to Pont Neuf. It was just starting to get dark, so I took a series of photos in the diminishing light while we waited for the Eiffel to get flashy. Which it did. Then we went home.
September 6
Montmarte and Pigalle
Did you hear the one about the nuns, the priest, and the restroom code?
Starbucks on St Michel had a code for the restroom that they printed on the receipts. If you didn’t buy something, you didn’t get a receipt, and you wouldn’t know what the code was. Clever. But if you didn’t know about the code, you weren’t likely to see it even if you had a receipt.
Fortunately, I was there to provide them with the code, because it looked like they were getting kind of desperate.
There was also a private English lesson going on. An American woman was teaching a French girl who looked to be in her twenties. There was an English school nearby (called Wall Street English), but this looked more like a freelance effort.
We took the Metro from St Michel to Montmartre, at the bottom of the hill. From there we walked a few blocks up the hill to the funicular. All along the way are junky tourist shops, carefully positioned to capture people walking from the Metro to the funicular.
Of course, we bought shirts.
On the funicular was a woman from Arizona. Her husband was from Ohio. Small world and all that.
The current funicular opened in 1991 and replaced the original line, which was opened in 1900 (and was water-powered until 1935). The line was shut down after an accident in 2006 and only reopened the month before we got there. Our trip was uneventful.
Mom bought a hat from a huckster at the view area in front of Sacré-Cœur. We haggled and got him down to 8€, which is just about what the hat was selling for elsewhere. But we haggled, and that’s what counts.
The view from Sacré-Cœur is not high on the list of Paris view experiences. For one thing, it’s not that high. Primarily, though, it’s only a little over 90°, and most of what you’d want to see is in the other 270°. Sacré-Cœur itself is an enormous white church constructed in the 1870s as penance for the latest bout of French naughtiness. The communards, I think. The church is white because of the calcite in the stone, which is also the source of plaster of Paris.
We continued up the hill, covering part of the Rick Steves Montmartre walk, but mostly just wandering around.
We ate lunch at Chez Plumeis, the only French cafe of our whole trip. I had the escargot. And a Coke. In front of the cafe was an excellent bass player (upright bass) who played an assortment of popular songs spanning several decades. Including Hey Jude. Our waiter recognized that song, but couldn’t quite place it. Was it Simon & Garfunkel? Well, no…
About 50 feet away was a photo shoot of an artist drawing a portrait of a model. For an ad, I assume, but we never found out. A sign for the nearby Dali museum made it a little bit surreal.
After lunch we walked down to the Dali museum. After a slight kerfuffle about a senior discount (it was posted, but we hadn’t asked for it), we went down the stairs to the small but appropriately odd museum dedicated to Dali’s sculptures. I hadn’t known that he made sculptures. But everything was there: dripping watches, drawers, the whole bit.
We wandered slowly and windingly down the hill, looking at moulins (windmills) and a sort of escalator crane thing to get furniture in and out of these ancient apartments. At the bottom of the hill was Moulin Rouge, the famous theater that has featured Le Pétomane, among others. Moulin Rouge is at one end of Nouvelle Athènes, otherwise known as Pigalle, which is known primarily for sex shops and hookers and such.
Next to the Moulin Rouge was a Quick, so naturally we stopped for chicken wings. Across the street was a shop advertising:
Lingerie
Latex
Cuirs
Gadgets
Google Translate says that cuirs means hides, which I assume refers to leather goods. I sure hope it does, anyway.
We walked along Blvd. de Clichy, past the sex shops and the Erotic Museum (how it compares to the one in Barcelona I’ll probably never know), to Place Pigalle, where we caught the Metro back to St. Michel. Then email at Milk, wings at Quick, and back St. Germaine to the apartment.
September 7
Photos, the Champs-Elysées, and the Catacombs
While Mom slept in, I went out at 7:00 to take pictures. I walked along Quai de Conti to P des Arts, then down to the river and back along the river to Ile de la Cite, across to the Rat Store, and down Rue de Rivoli to Bastille. I didn’t mean to go to Bastille—I thought I was paralleling the river—but that’s where I ended up, so I had to take Boulevard Henri IV back to Ile Saint-Louis. From there I went back to Ile de la Cite and went to the post office to buy stamps.
The guy at the post office was entertained by whatever I said to him in French. He was in a good mood anyway, because that was his last day before going on one of those long French vacations. He told me this in English, of course.
I walked across to the Gibert Jeune book store on St Michel to kill some time before the Notre Dame tower opened. Gibert Jeune has his picture on all the signs for his store. He looks remarkably like Julio Iglesias. I bought a book of the bridges of the Seine for Mom, walked across the street to get some more expensive euros, then went back across the river to Notre Dame and stood in line for the tower.
It had been sunny up to that point. Now it started to cloud over. Just before the tower opened. I stood in line for a little longer, but finally decided that I’d be better off waiting a day for a chance of getting pictures on a sunny day. So I walked back to the apartment.
It was sort of a late start, but we went to Starbucks anyway. Then we went across the river and up the Champs-Elysées, where we saw:
This last was at a large, fancy Haagen Dazs, which unfortunately didn’t live up to the ones in Barcelona and Monte Carlo. Someone had left the remainder of their ice cream on an outside table, and the pigeon was diving in enthusiastically. I would never have thought of ice cream as acceptable pigeon cuisine, but I wouldn’t have expected hermit crabs to like peanut butter, either. Sometimes animals can surprise you, even on the Champs-Elysées.
Then back to Place de la Concorde to ride the ferris wheel again.
And then…the Catacombs.
The catacombs are away from the center of town (which was why they put them there), but easily accessible by Metro. Mom waited for me at a nearby McDonald’s while I went underground.
The bones of six million Parisians are stacked in tidy rows along subterranean passageways, like an underground bone warehouse. They were moved there beginning in 1786, when the Cimetière des Innocents (which was merely a series of open trenches into which corpses were thrown) became unmanageable. According to Cadogan:
The Innocents’ function, and its social scene, changed little from medieval times to the reign of Louis XVI. The decision to get rid of it was only made when the corpses, and their attendant hordes of crazed, flesh-eating rats, started pushing through the walls of the neighbours’ cellars.
The rats are gone now—they’re running their own restaurant—but the bones remain for the enjoyment of adventure-seeking visitors. I wandered through the dimly lit corridors behind a group of cheerfully irreverent British tourists and tried to keep my camera steady enough to get decent pictures (flashes were prohibited). There was melodramatic about death along the whole length of the walk, things like “Halt, this is the empire of the dead” and “Happy is he who is forever faced with the hour of his death and prepares himself for the end every day.” (British tourist: “Happy is he? More like crazy is he…”)
The guidebooks all warn that you will be searched when you leave to make sure you don’t smuggle out any bits of 18th-century paupers. But after climbing the very long and narrow spiral staircase at the end, I simply went out an unmarked door onto a side street. There was a small room with a desk just inside the door, but no one was there. If I’d known, I could have gotten a souvenir skull.
Afterward, we took a break in the apartment, then went out in search of food. We had planned to go to the Eiffel Tower, but when we got there, it was kind of late and we didn’t want to bother. So we went back to St Michel and got sandwiches at a little shop and took them to Pont Neuf.
September 8
Notre Dame Tower, Rues Bastiat and Cler
Starbucks first, then back to the apartment. Then I went out for another try at the Notre Dame tower. This time it was sunny.
The tour starts in the south tower (on the left as you’re facing Notre Dame), up a narrow stone spiral staircase, into a large room with a rib-vaulted ceiling. This is the gift shop, and you are trapped there for about 15 minutes. When enough people are loaded up with heavy purchases, the group continues up the spiral staircase to the chimera gallery. This is where the famous bored gargoyles reside. They’re not really gargoyles at all, but chimerae, which are purely ornamental. Gargoyles are designed to drain rainwater.
The chimera gallery is 150 feet above the ground and stretches across the entire front of the cathedral. In the south tower, the tour offers a detour into the belfry, where we went up some very steep wooden steps to the bell itself. There are other bells in the cathedral, but this one is the 13-ton bell that only rings on Catholic feast days, so there wasn’t any risk of it ringing while we were in there.
As I was going into the tower the security guard said something to me in a very thick French accent. I couldn’t tell what it was, so I just smiled and nodded. Turns out it was “watch your head.”
Then it was up another 141 steps to the top of the south tower. At 206 feet above the ground, this offers the best view in all directions.
The whole tour is about 50 minutes, but is unrushed. There’s plenty of time to linger and take pictures. At the end of the tour, we walked straight down the 400 steps in the south tower. The staircase is so narrow that you can lean into the center post and sort of spin around it as you go down. I could have descended a lot faster if I hadn’t had someone in front of me.
I walked back along the river to the apartment, collected Mom, and we went to the Amorino’s on Rue de L’Ancienne Comedie for gelato, which we took to Square du Vert-Galant. That was our lunch.
Then we wandered…
We went back to the apartment to collapse for a while before going out for dinner.
Faced with both hunger and a shortage of imagination, we went to Indiana Cafe again. The downstairs section was closed for some reason, so we sat upstairs. A rugby game was on TV, but I couldn’t tell who was playing. A guy at a nearby table was wearing a shirt that said “Te Quiero!! You Bitch” on the back. I can only assume that the girl he was with didn’t know what it meant.
Most people dining in Paris don’t get quesadillas. In that respect, we were trendsetters.
After dinner, we walked out to Passerelle des Arts. It was a warm evening, and dozens of people were having picnics on the bridge, complete with wine. Very Parisian.
September 9
Gypsies, Rugby, and the Eiffel Tower
There were helicopters at the Louvre. This wasn’t due to some more modernist artistic bent, but PR for the Marine Nationale. And they weren’t in the Louvre, just in that square courtyard section.
So we perused them for a while before heading toward the Arc du Carrousel (the Arc de Triomphe, Jr). A British guy was leading a tour group around the Place du Carrousel and describing all the ways in which Dan Brown’s descriptions simply wouldn’t work.
After Starbucks at the Louvre, we looked around the gift shop, which had the quality souvenirs you would expect from a world-class art museum, such as Mona Lisa pencils and flip-flops. Mom bought a Paris DVD.
We headed out through the Tuilleries. The seasonal Tuilleries ferris wheel was gone, but the rugby ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde was still there, so we rode it again, because we could.
Afterward, we walked back into the Tuilleries. A woman came running up to us with a ring and asked if we had dropped it. She was very friendly. Effusively friendly. She spoke some English, but with a thick accent. She was pleased to meet us. She did that French cheek kissy thing. Once we got it across to her that we hadn’t dropped the ring, she wanted to give it to us. As a gift. She put it on Mom’s finger in a sincere display of generosity. Never mind that the ring supposedly belonged to someone else. And after she had been so generous, couldn’t we give her a little money for a sandwich? She didn’t have much to eat and she was very hungry. Mom gave her the ring back. At that point she muttered something in French that was probably impolite and stalked off.
We went up on a nearby rise and looked to see where she went, but she was gone.
We took the Metro from the Tuilleries to Hotel de Ville, which is conveniently located next to a Quick. While we were eating, we saw both gendarmes and surete across the street. The Hotel de Ville was cordoned off, and various categories of police were standing guard, but there were people on the other side of the barrier just milling around.
Turns out it was the rugby world cup on a big-screen TV. We stood and watched the game for about an hour before walking back to the apartment to pack. (Wales beat Canada 42-17.)
We went to the Eiffel Tower for supper. Altitude 95 was outside of our price range and Le Jules Vernes wasn’t even a consideration (and we didn’t have a reservation for either place), but there were some buffets with sandwiches and the like, and some outside tables overlooking Parc du Champ de Mars, so we thought that sounded ideal for our last evening.
The tables were closed. The buffets were open, but most of the food was gone. So we got some microwave pizza, chicken-flavored potato chips, and Coke and sat inside on the windowsill.
Microwave pizza at the Eiffel Tower: The other side of Paris Cuisine.
September 10
The Journey Home
A final trip to Starbucks St. Michel and then we were off on the RER to CDG. Getting to the airport: not a problem. Getting around in the airport: problem.
I could remember the general direction from when we had arrived, so we went that way, but nothing looked quite right, and it went on and on. We finally got to terminals with official-looking people and I found someone I could ask without standing in line. We were, of course, at the wrong terminal. BA was at another terminal on the other side of the parking lot, which was down the elevator and out a door and down a ramp and around a fence and across the parking lot and around another fence and up another elevator. And we still had trouble finding it.
But find it we did, and the bored person at the desk gave us our boarding passes. At every other airport I’ve been to, you go through the security check first, then find your gate. At CDG, there’s a separate security check for each pair of gates. So once you go through the security check, you have no access to food, restrooms, or anything else outside of the seating area at the gate entrance.
We went through the security line for our gate, where I was stopped by Inspector Clouseau.
On the outside of my backpack I had an aluminum carabiner. It was a promotion from Volt Technical Services and had their name on the side. It was green. Inspector Clouseau thought it posed a threat. He helpfully demonstrated to me how I could use it as a set of brass knuckles (or in this case, aluminum knuckles). The other security person was not convinced and actually rolled his eyes at the officiousness of his coworker. The Inspector was generous enough to offer to let me fill out a form or something that would allow me to mail it home, but I’m sure that would have cost me more than a new carabiner, so I had him drop it in the box of contraband items (which contained only one other item — some nail clippers, I think). Thus stripped of our weaponry, we went through to the gate and waited.
And waited. It was almost time for the plane to leave and there was no one at the gate. There was also no plane at the gate. And because we were sequestered, we could go back to the check-in desk and ask. Eventually, someone must have found someone to ask, because an anxious-looking woman in a uniform came in and told us all something in French, anxiously, and people started to file out. We followed, because what else could we do? We went to the adjacent pair of gates and went through that security line (much more quickly) and straight onto the plane.
The airport had posted the wrong gate. We found this out from the pilot, who had wondered why his plane was empty. We’d probably still be sitting there if BA hadn’t sent the airport people out looking for us. “But never mind that! We’re all here now, and we’ll get started straight away!” And so we did.
Heathrow is less of a pain than CDG, but not by much. There’s no difficulty getting to Terminal 4, but once there, there’s no indication where to go. There are old CRT monitors that are permanently out of service. There’s one information board and the center of the long terminal that contains time information for the flights, but no gate information until it’s time to board. We went to Starbucks at one end of the terminal, but couldn’t find out where to board without first going back to the center to find out where our gate was.
But between Starbucks and boarding, Mom was finally faced with the reality that she couldn’t postpone Aunt Beth’s souvenir anymore. A little too late for a Paris souvenir, of course, so a Heathrow souvenir would have to do. I think she finally ended up with some tea, although it looked to me like the box said hot chocolate. Whatever. It was something, and we could get on the plane now.
Transatlantic flights are long. I watched Shrek the Third three times. I also saw some movie with Nicholas Cage where he could predict the future a few seconds at a time. I think it was called Next. Eventually we made it back to Seatac and took the shuttle home.
As for the rugby world cup, France made it to the semi-finals, but lost the bronze to Argentina. England came in second and South Africa won the cup. My favorite, New Zealand, was knocked out in the quarter-finals by France. C'est la vie.