Thursday 23 November 2006
Eurostar to Paris through the chunnel.
Arrived at 7 pm, bought metro tickets, went to hostel.
Found La Boite du Pizza down the hill, ordered two amazing pizzas.
Walked with the pizzas all the way down to Saint-Lazare from Abbesses.
Saw the Christmas lights and the window displays at the Galleries Lafayette. It was all themed after Marrakech, there were music in some, dancing pots and jars and tea pots and each window was a different colour.
Walked all the way back up to Montmartre and saw the Moulin Rouge. Really expensive to see the show - 140 euros were the cheapest dinner-dance deals!
Grabbed some wine at a grocer and headed to Sacre Coeur, which was not far from our hostel - the Hotel Caulaincourt. Drank on the steps, did the Electric Slide and sang. Made it back somehow and safely down the stairs to our room.
Friday 24 November 2006
Toured Sacre Coeur first thing in the morning. Had free breakfast at the hostel, orange juice is the best thing in the world after a night of wine-drinking. Sacre Coeur is a recent addition to the city of Paris, as in turn-of-century. Its inside is covered in mosaics, and the glass is beautiful, though not as complicated as Notre Dame.
Took the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe. Got out into the rain, but it was rain on the Avenue Champs-Elysees so couldn't get me down! Took pictures from outside on the road and then walked to it via the ped subway. Saw the flame of the Unknown Soldier and commemorative plaques. Napoleon is on the left, facing the Arc as it faces the Ch-Elys. There were flowers and ribbons all around the flame, and an amazing view down the avenue.
Walked down the Champs-Elysees and had lunch at Cafe Georges V. Delicious.
From there, went to the Eiffel Tower, the Tour Eiffel. Went to the first and second floors, not all the way to the top, but the view was spectacular from the second floor.
Headed toward Les Invalides intending to meet Nick's friend Tim, but he never showed. Had hot drinks at cafe in the meantime, then headed towards the Louvre to grab dinner. Passed through an amazing shopping neighborhood, beautiful, fashionable window displays again. Had dinner at La Coupe d'Or, had a lovely little cheese plate after delicious overflowing salade.
Made it to the Louvre by 8:30. Free entry for under-26ers on Friday nights. Saw the Victory of Samothrace (my favorite statue), and looked at all the religous art on the way to the Mona Lisa. St Sebastian being shot full of arrows on a Roman column -- learned from a lovely German student what it was all about, sort of like religious propaganda painting, and still masterfully done. There were young adults (our age) all over in Louvre t-shirts offering explanation of the paintings. Other Leonardo paintings were St John the Baptist, Anne and Mary and Jesus and a lamb, and Mary with Jesus and Elizabeth and John. Will find titles and pictures. The room with the Mona Lisa hosted an interesting pair of paintings on opposite walls. Both were enormous and kind of similar. One was the fall of Lucifer and the other was Jupiter punishing the Vices. The fall of Lucifer was amazing - the view was from just inside a pit or down the side of a cliff with the angels standing on its edge watching Lucifer fall from above them; he was former king of the angels after all. The punishment of the Vices had Jupiter at the top with his eagle, and there was no bottom or top to the painting; all the figures were in the air, twisted and falling or diving down towards the bottom of the picture, all very chaotic. A fabulous piece and you felt like you were up in the air with Jupiter. The Mona Lisa itself was very small, behind glass, and not in the dark red room anymore. There were two wooden barriers between us and the glass, which threw a wrench into our plan to walk out with it. We were sure no one would notice after all.
When we were done, we walked out and took pictures of the pyramids and fountains at night. I think they're really beautiful, in spite of the fact that they don't match the big beautiful old buildings around them. They make for extraordinary pictures, and I'm sure Val got some good ones.
Then we found wine and sat on a bridge over the Seine to drink it. Invented a game called 'Blow', which entailed blowing in the top of our bottles to see what note it made and "racing" to get the lowest. Paris is gorgeous at night, what with the lights. The sparkling Eiffel Tower grew on me so fast. I don't think I knew that it sparkled at night, but I liked it just a much as it being lit up regularly.
Once again, made it home somehow, this time taking the Metro.
Saturday 25 November 2006
Got up early enough again. Nick ran out last night and picked up five more bottles of wine. We managed to drink half of two of them and a quarter of a third between the five of us after we got back to the hostel last night. Jeremy cursed red wine, he must have had the most of those three. Orange juice cures it all though. Kara wanted to sleep in again, but it didn't take us three hours to get out of the room this time.
Went to Notre Dame. Took Metro into centre-ville and walked to the cathedral from there. Got split up inside the church which was absolutely mad. Those huge rose windows? Amazing! I love that all along the walls there are saints' shrines where you can light candles (for a price) to a particular saint. At Sacre Coeur, I had two at Therese of Lisieux and two at the vision of the Sacred Heart. At Notre Dame, I lit two at the Notre Dame de Paris. This is probably the weightiest cathedral we've seen; it's dark and the stone feels much heavier without lots of light carving-work. But the windows! I toured the towers by myself (because I was by myself) and saw the gargoyles. Didn't take many pictures because my camera was dying, but I figure that I can always buy a book with all the photos in it. The memory will persist and will be strong every time I see a picture. More importantly, not taking pictures inside the church is out of respect. They have a sign asking you not to, but don't enforce it because everybody is taking pictures anyway and how can you make everyone (a lot of people) stop taking pictures all at once? Anyway.
After touring the tower, I waited in the plaza outside the cathedral to wait for the others. We had gotten split up inside the cathedral. They saw me first; a moment that was almost as happy as those moments in Venice when we found each other. Jeremy was the only other person who had wanted to see the towers so he did that while Val and Nick went to look for baguettes and cheese; Kara and I had lunch at the corner cafe, the Au Tours de Notre Dame. She had a croque-monsieur and I had a vegetable lasagne with white sauce. The French and their food? It's true. It's amazing, every single bit of it.
We crossed the river for the walk toward Les Invalides. That bank opposite Notre Dame is where the street vendors have those green boxes attached to the stone wall, with the lids that lift to reveal their wares: books and knick-knacks and bric-a-brac and records and paintings, all sorts of little things and old things all mixed together. Our goal was to find the Shakespeare book store that Jeremy had spoken of, and we did! It is this cool old and new bookstore, with beds upstairs and a rare book room. Run by an expatriate first, now his daughter, the books are all in English. I can't remember if he was English or American, but the place is fabulous. We had a wonderful discovery: that all five of us could spend an hour and a half browsing a book store and all five of us would still be happy, if not happier than before, after that hour and a half. Must be magic.
After walking past parliament-style buildings and the house of the prime minister, we actually went into Les Invalides--this second time. The Royal Hospital there has been converted into a war and armies museum, with all kinds of armors, weapons, etc. on display in the old Hospital. Napoleon's tomb is in a separate building; he took over the foundations of the church at the Hospital. Literally, the church was there, and he dug his tomb underneath the nave. It's a very grand thing. Once upon a time, when you entered from the correct direction, you would have seen the great gaping entrance before anything else. It ramps down into a round room where the walls are covered in Romanesque reliefs of Napoleon and his many achievements. There was absolutely no evidence of ego, even when one wall opened into a giant marble and gilded statue of Napoleon as a Roman Caesar, the epitome of virtue and honour.
I remember reading that it took something like 12 kg of gold to re-coat the roof of Les Invalides back in the early 1980s. Imagine that in terms of what gold is worth now!
Our next stop was due back to the Champs-Elysees. But when we left the Hospital it became clear we'd have to slow down. The sunset was totally breathtaking. It was so pink and beautiful looking down the boulevard that all of our breath was short and our hearts were flushed I think. The exit came right out onto a formal lawn, with the wide boulevard in front of us, straight onto the bridge with the lamps and golden pegasus statues. Le Tour Eiffel was to the left, already sparkling, and behind it was a deep tropical pink sky, with purple overhead and blue around the back bottom edges. There was still orange west of the tower, and though we had stopped for the moment we made a point to hurry toward the bridge in the hope of catching the rest of the sunset. We didn't catch the orange, but we did catch the view with the lights of the bridge on and the Eiffel Tower sparkling with sea birds flying up toward it from the Seine. It was the longest moment of gorgeousness I've ever experienced. If beauty like that could be captured, there'd be nothing wild that was interesting anymore. Kitsch, I know.
So we crossed the river and took pictures of the Arc de Triomphe and the obelisk at dusk, with all the city lights and the car lights and the spot lights on both attractions. All the lights everywhere! The city of light, indeed! We grabbed a bite to eat and walked up the Champs-Elysees towards the high street shopping blocks we had seen the first day. Kara and I did some shopping; the others said they were okay people watching or something. I'm not sure how many times travelers tried to get money from them. Kara found a pretty blue dress and I found a brown handbag (like I'd been looking for). Nick stopped at the ATM to get some cash for dinner and came back with 300 euros that had been left in the machine (the retrait). So... we waited to see if she'd show up to collect her money, but she never came back. It was the woman in front of him in the queue. We ended up keeping the money. We gave some coins to the woman sitting near us and headed back to Montmartre for dinner.
We had planned on going to the restaurant where we'd heard the jazz guitar, but there was no music coming from there. We looked at all the menus of the restaurants on the artists' square, I think, and decided on La Boheme - the corner restaurant with the red awnings and the view of the back of Sacre Coeur. It was a full five course meal. Here's the breakdown: Aperitifs = kir, kir royal (kir with champagne). Two delicious bottles of wine. Appetizers = salads, onion soups. Plats principaux = everything from steaks to scallops. Cheese platter, with emmenthal, chevre, camembert, brie and one more which I can't name. Dessert = apple tart, creme brulee and the BEST goddamn chocolate mousse I have ever had. Goddamn. If I ever, EVER taste anything like that again, I will perish in my chair. It was so incredibly sensual and sexy and alive in my mouth... no chocolate mousse will ever compare. The first, the last, my everything.
I have the full support of the entire group present on this, because they all tried it and a couple of them did the same thing I did.
To bring things full circle, we grabbed more wine and headed for the steps of the Sacre Coeur again. The night air was cold, but the lights of Paris are so beautiful at night. We were so damn lucky to have the view that we had. It's the only hill or height in the city aside from the tower or a skyscraper. Only we got to be outside. No electric slide this time or broken bottles. When we got back to the hostel, we took down the bunk beds and put them together so that we could have a five-person sleepover.
Sunday 26 November 2006
Woke up between Val and Jeremy. Again, the moment was just as good as that moment in Venice when I woke up in the Hotel Villa Parco in a king-size bed and looked around at the other girls in the room. Again, magic. We got up and headed back up the hill to the artists' market. Got our souvenir shopping out of the way and bought some little pieces of art. I bought one that is sort of garish, but it has our restaurant in it. It's the smaller, more inexpensive version of the one with the full facade of the restaurant in it. Which also means that you can only see the awning, rather than the window where we sat, but whatever. That's La Boheme, our amazing Parisian restaurant right there. I'm sure those artists make a killing off tourists like me.
When we got back to the hostel, the guy at the desk asked what we had done to the beds. I wasn't there for this, but it happened. I don't know what the answer was, other than "Don't worry, we'll fix it." The maid had come in, I believe, to clean the bathroom. Don't think the wine bottles were spotted or we'd have been in trouble. They had a policy we didn't abide by, not that it mattered much as we found out.
Anyway, we made it to the airport with only minor trouble. Apparently our Metro tickets were not valid all the way to the airport. Would have known this had I looked closely at them, where they said "dans Paris", but the map du poche could have fooled me. The man at the gate was kind and let us through anyway. We flew back and got home uneventfully from there. Honestly, after that trip I was ready for the worst. Everything was perfect all week-end, it all went our way and we were the happiest people on earth, I think. It could have all ended there and it almost would have been okay. (I mean, not totally or really, of course, but you understand.) Nick kept saying something like he could die after Paris and it would be alright. Don't know if I would go that far, but I was ready for something to go wrong after all that rightness.
Anyway that's our week-end in Paris. Have one sometime; it's the best trip you'll ever take.
