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lindsaydotcom
To get to Paris we took the Eurostar train that goes underneath the English Channel, and gets you from London to Paris in a little under three hours. I had booked way the hell ahead of time and therefore got us seats around a table in the first train compartment. I spent about an hour of the trip looking through the back of my guidebook to Paris and making a cheat sheet of French phrases for myself (Je voudrais…, Je ne comprends pas…, Le addition, s’il vous plait, etc.) partly because I’d done a lot of reseach ahead of time and found out that the French are much nicer to you if you at least attempt to speak the language. And partly because I’m a dork who likes to do these things. Before we went into the “chunnel” the conductor spoke first in English and then repeated himself after in French. After the chunnel everything was French first, then English.
Arrived at Gare du Nord station around 7 that night and bought a carnet of metro tickets to get us to our hotel. Boarding a metro train at 7:30 with our bags in the middle of a Saturday evening meant that it was a very crowded trip and we were looked at a bit oddly, but no one bothered us. I navigated us to our stop (Maubert Mutalite), and we went off in search of our hotel. We stayed at the Abbatial Saint Germain and had rooms next to each other on the 5th floor. We decided to go up to our rooms, store our stuff, and go in search of something to eat. I didn’t know what to expect with the room, since I had already been disappointed with Expedia’s description of the hotel in London, but saying I was pleasantly surprised would have been an understatement. The room was charming and super clean and we had a view of the dome of the Pantheon from our room, which faced directly onto Blvd. St. Germain
We walked around for a bit and ended going to an Italian place for dinner, (I know: Italian on our first night in Paris. Heh.) where the others all got pizzas and I got eggplant parmesan. I prepped with my cheat sheet, I double checked the guidebook (Waiters don’t generally come to you in France unless you signal for them to come over. Got it.), and started to stutter through my order... when the waited alleviated any fears by responding kindly in perfect, if slightly accented, English. And that was the way it was all throughout the city. I would try my best in French and they’d smile and talk to me in fluent English. I decided it really was true about them respecting people who tried to speak the language so I just kept on plowing away at it, and made sure to pepper whatever I said with plenty of “merci”s and “s’il vous plait”s and we really had no problems whatsoever with anyone. No one was rude, and no one looked down their noses at us that we could see, and what we couldn’t see we didn’t care about. Our hotel was only about two blocks from Notre Dame, so we went walking for a bit to look at the sites before turning in for the evening. I forced everyone to stop and watch crepes being made, and we split a crepe sucre. Mm.
The next day was Sunday and headed back out to Notre Dame, where we were lucky enough to be visiting during mass (Good travel karma #7) – absolutely stunning. Being neither Catholic nor French I couldn’t tell you what was happening, but as we quietly followed the roped path around the cathedral our journey was periodically punctuated by singing which was beautiful enough to pierce your heart.
Notre Dame from the Seine.
In Notre Dame, during Sunday morning mass.
We left and decided to head over to Sainte Chapelle. But first we stopped along the way and picked up what were to be the first of many paninis or sanwiches to eat as we wandered the streets (I got three cheese and tomato on a crusty baguette. Heaven!). We made our way to the church and were ready to enter when we saw a sign showing that they had an entrance fee. Oh. A fee. Hadn’t counted on that. J decided to see what he could see from the souveniere stand, and found out that we happened to be there on a day where everyone was given free entrance. (Good travel karma #8).
Sainte Chapelle is best known for it's AMAZING stained glass, as the whole thing was built as a beautiful place to house supposed relics from Christ's crucifixion.
We decided to poke our heads in the Conciergerie since it was part of the same complex as Sainte Chapelle and see if that was free, by any chance, too. It was, yay (Good travel karma #9).! We spent a couple pleasant hours wandering the museum (it was an eh sort of one focusing on the prisoners held during the French Revolution. I’m glad we didn’t have to pay. The entry was was really the most interesting thing, as it immediately reminded me of Moria from the Lord of the Rings.) and then headed out to see what else we could see.
Great hall in the Conciergerie
Bryan wondered whether this amazing free entry also extended into free entrance to the Louvre, so we decided to wander in that general direction. Along the way we found ourselves at the Georges Pompidous Centre, which I had previously known nothing about, but is very cool. Bryan knew the architectural design behind it and explained that the whole building was designed in such a way that all of the "guts" of the building were exposed on the outside – meaning all ductwork, all vents, all plumbing, elevators, everything you’d normally find inside the walls of the building on the exterior and painted a specific color indicating what its purpose is. What I liked was the fact that it's also where street performers of all ilk gather.
Pompidous Centre, back side
We left and wandered through the gardens at Les Halles and the open space in front of Sainte Eustache on our way to the Louvre and eventually found ourselves there at what we thought was around 3:00 in the afternoon. Lo and behold, free entrance to that, too (Good travel karma #10)! I walked in and said I didn’t care what else we saw, but I was not leaving that day before seeing the Mona Lisa. Everyone agreed, and we started our exploration by going through the Grecian statues and then onto the Egyptian collection. Holy moley. Rooms, and rooms, and rooms, and then another wing of rooms worth of egyptian artifacts. I found myself feeling unaccountably sad while looking at some of the items. I understand that certain things are given as gifts, and certain things are taken as plunder or stolen from tomb raiders, but how terribly sad to such faith in the afterlife as to prepare your journey with such meticulousness and then to have your mummified body stolen from your gravesite and put on display for a bunch of gawking people and their cameras. Each headstone and sarcophogi made me feel that way, and there are an awful lot of them. And the mummified pets? Oh, my. There was a cat where it was so preserved that you could see the firmness of the ear tips. It was disturbing.
One small wing of the grand, GRAND complex that is the Louvre.
We started hearing announcements saying the Museum would be closing at 6, and that the Mona Lisa viewing would be closed at 5:30. We checked our watches: a bit before 4:00, so we figured we were good on the time and kept wandering. So many items from the bronze age. Sooooooo many. At around 4:15 we decided to head to where the Mona Lisa is kept and then view what other paintings we could before heading out for the day. We were turned around and in a different area from where we thought we were so we had to spend some time figuring out our location and backtracking a bit. We had just arrived at the gallery entrance to the Mona Lisa, when two Louvre workers began SHUTTING THE DOORS IN OUR FACES. None of the four of us realized Paris was in a different time zone than London so we thought it was 4:30 when it was really 5:30. We spend the remaining half hour wandering some more before leaving the Louvre, without ever having seen the Mona Lisa. Le sigh.
With very aching feet we returned to the Latin Quarter for dinner and ate our first price fixed meal, for a grand totally of 10 Euro/person. We’re such big spenders. Hee. We all got hot steaming bowls of onion soup (omigod, THIS is why you go to France) and I got salmon and a fresh, soft, mild cheese with currants for dessert. We went back to our hotel and passed out.
More later.
