Day 31: Paris

June 19, 2012

This is the song that evokes Paris the most for me. Dodie thinks it is a bit melancholy, and votes for "I Love Paris (in the Springtime)", but I am sticking to my guns. However, I must admit, it is Springtime and we do love Paris.

Before we could love Paris, we had to get back there from our friend Didier's place in the suburb of Bezons. This is the trip that Didier does every work day, and it is quite onerous. First there is a 30 minute car ride on a four lane highway, just to get to the train station. Then it's 20 minutes on the train (which is integrated into the subway system) to get into town. I guess a 50 minute commute is not all that bad for a big city.

At least the commuters have good pastries at the station

Didier guides us into the metro. He is a manager in the Paris transit authority.

The main tourist/historical sites in Paris, like in London, are clustered around the river.

We popped out of the metro the Arc de Triumphe. This is the famous landmark at the centre of an insane roundabout with thirteen streets coming out of it. The main street is the Champs Elysees. Along this street can be found many of the big names in clothing, jewellery, perfume, handbags, and such. There are also some pretty big price tags for restaurant meals.

These guys on the Arc de Triomphe are having a good time!

At the Arc de Triomphe we hopped on to one of those open top bus tours found in many cities. These are for dumb tourists, but guess what, we are dumb tourists. These bus tours are the quickest way to get the picture. Then you can hop off and walk to your heart's content.

The spin around in the bus (actually a two or three hour epic) confirmed the vast scale of the palaces, squares, sculpture, museums, etc. of Paris. Around every corner was a spectacular scene of ornamented large structures, usually with toga clad heroic figures standing on their roofs or in niches in their facades. Even "ordinary" apartment buildings were works of art and ornamentation.

The whole thing not only blew our ability to absorb and remember it, but also was clearly so much "more" than London.

Many sites (like museums and the Eiffel tower) had lineups of tourists

Naturally, the Eiffel Tower is a major iconic spot. Here are a few snaps of it:

The Eiffel tower has its "own" patisserie.

The Seine itself is probably the #2 sight. There is so much romantic overlay to the Seine, and for itself and as the thread running through the other grand sites, the Seine really is something.

Of course, we noticed lots of stuff as we bussed or walked along. For example, the dominant form of transport other than car here is not bicycle but rather motorbike.

This photo shows a few favourite Paris transport modes: #1, motorbikes, then a bicycle rental station, and someone parked carelessly on the street corner

And we did see that many Parisians, particularly ladies, were carefully dressed. We did not see anything "haute couture", but many did look, at least, well groomed. Joni's representative bit of Parisian style is the "flitty scarf", and we saw that we could pick these up very cheap:

At the end of the day we met Didier at a train station and Elena picked us up with the car. We stopped by a grocery where Didier picked up "rilettes". This goes well with baguette, and while he an Elena were willing to buy grocery store croissants, they could not tolerate anything but the best baguettes. So we drove to a boulanger and found it closed (no reason given, of course). so we drove to another, and another, all mysteriously closed. Fortunately boulangers are not far apart, and fourth try was lucky.

That meant we could include the following with our supper!

There was of course lots more to our Paris visit. Here is a further taste of it. I can not make sense of all we saw, but here at least are some categories:

BUILDINGS