Day 86: Paris: Super, Glitzy

October 15, 2015

Didier's place could still be considered to be in Paris, but actually it is at an independent town called Maisons-Lafitte. Maisons-Lafitte has its own chateau, church, and town centre but it does not feel like a town to us, since urban development has extended from Paris to encompass it. Maisons-Lafitte, of course, also has its own bakery(ies), one of which is the one where the Paris-Brest pastry was invented.

Since downtown Paris is about 20 km away, going there is a matter of hopping a train. We passed that Paris-Brest bakery on the way to the station, and had another look. This time we stayed outside, firmly clutching our wallets. It was a good thing, because we discovered that the little pastries we had seen yesterday were not quite the "bicycle wheel" items that the legend was based on. Those in fact were in the front window, and run €22.50 each!

We carried on to the station, where we came first to a ticket machine. Dodie was for trying to find an actual human ticket seller, but Joni and I felt confident we could deal with the machine. Wrong. The machine refused to accept either our cards or paper money. It seemed fixated on wanting coins for the quite high (we thought) €8.50 return fares to the city. So we were forced to hunt up a real human ticket seller.

One of the themes of today's visit to Paris was that I felt quite like a country bumpkin most of the time. It's something I don't quite remember from last time, but it started at the station. To get to the tracks you have to step into a sort of Plexiglas chamber and put your ticket into a reader that then opens a gate. It is all clearly designed to foil those who would jump over the gate. In rural France we grew used to the honesty and forthrightness of the people, and for example quit locking our bikes. So this was new territory.

We had to do some quick and heavy figuring to decide where to get off the train. Our plan was to use the Hop On- Hop Off bus service in town, so all we had to do was to link up to it. We decided on the Opera. This is the Opera, by the way, of Phantom of the Opera fame, but for us the first thing was to get out of the station. There are miles of underground corridors in and around stations like that.

Once on the surface, we were of course struck (yet again) by the very Paris-ness of it all: Grand buildings, streets going off at odd angles, rushing crowds and cars, cafes. We walked around the (huge) opera three times looking for the bus stop of the service we had chosen. After asking direction twice, we were closing in on it. We were also freezing, since the day had started at 3 degrees and had not warmed up. So when we came upon a large Lindt chocolate outlet, hot chocolate sounded good. But 5 euros for a hot chocolate sounded like a ripoff, and a majority of us decided to pass it up. Hah. The country folks would soon learn the facts of city life and prices!

When we did get on the tour bus, we felt a lot better - less tired and frozen - and could now enjoy the sights of Paris. Joni had actually lived near Paris while attending the Sorbonne, but the tour bus was still the best way to get around (though Joni did recommend in vain a much cheaper city bus route).

Paris has a minimum of 100 major sights, depending what you would call major. By some other definition, one could easily triple that. It would be crazy to try to review what we saw from the bus, but I will try to just generally put you in the picture. Paris is organized around (or along) the Seine, and the main stretch is a section of river of about 6 km, from the Eiffel Tower in the west to maybe the Bastille, in the east. Along this bit is arrayed the most fantastic group of buildings and monuments, on both sides of the river. The north (or right) bank has some of the high class properties, like the Louvre, the Champs Elysees, the Place de la Concorde, and the Opera. The south (or left) bank has Eiffel Tower, the Hotel des Invalides, and La Sorbonne. These are very heavyweight too, but the left bank has the reputation as being the bohemian side.

You might be able to make out some of this stuff in my photo of the tour bus map:

The eiffel tower is at the lower left, Arc de Triomphe at the left and the Sorbonne lower right, just off screen.

While of course there is no effort to be at all comprehensive, you might like to look at and read the captions from some of the shots taken from the bus:

Notre Dame - we need to go in tomorrow looking for a credential for the Santiago Compostella, though we already have one from Tours.

Voltaire actually lived in this building

Champs elysee leading to the Arc de Triomphe

The Rond Point around the Arc de Triomphe. We have actually cycled in this multi-laned meat grinder!

When Sarkozy won his election, he celebrated at this hypeer expensive restaurant on the Champs Elysee. It set a tone that had him thrown out next time around.

The golden domed Hotel des Invalides was built by Louis XIV to get war veterans off the streets. It houses museums now. The dome was recently redone with a lot of real gold

Requisite selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower

After two and a half hours on the only sort of heated bus, we dropped back off at the Opera, realizing how cold and hungry we really were. As it happened we found ourselves in front of one of the several buildings occupied by the flagship of the luxury Galleries Lafayette department store. Inside we could see food, and warmth, so that shut down any thought of finding a cool and groovy cafe.

We were not disappointed. The store (at least this level of this building) was stuffed with delicacies. Much was organized for takeaway purchase, but there were some areas of tables, and some in store ethnic restaurants. We began by just gawking at the counters of high end stuff, and particularly the pastries. It was all so beautiful. But now we wished we were back in bargain basement Maisons-Lafitte. On little item that attracted Dodie was a small green pastry called a Bamboo. It had green tea cream filling, and a price tag of €6.10! We settled as a first step for a pear tarte. Split 3 ways, it kept us from chewing our arms off or snarling (too much) at each other.

We did sit down at the in store Greek restaurant and got some reasonable food, before continuing our tour of things like teeny tiny chocolates for over 1 euro each.

Finally we dragged ourselves out of this Lafayette building to one across the street, that had ladies' fashions. This one also featured some large security guards at the entrance. One asked to look in my backpack. "Well ok, I replied, but there is nothing in there." This is where Dodie chimed in "Yes, but I have lots in here!". Now this is the time to understand that Dodie has been concerned about pickpockets in big cities, and consequently has been wearing here backpack backwards - on the front. Due to the extreme cold, she also had on a windbreaker, so the pack was underneath that. All this gave her a rather exaggerated front end profile. So when the crazy old Canadian lady declared "I have lots in here - take a look" and began to unzip her front, you can imagine why the poor security man beat a hasty retreat!

Once inside this second building, we found it really was like a cathedral to luxury consumption. It had a huge and coliurful domed roof, and a multi-storied large central empty area.

Not all the prices were insane, and Joni actually did find a sweater to buy. However again, we were standout country cousins. Naturally, there was not a single item of clothing for sale that we would want to own. This is probably correlated with them not having a single thing made with Gortex! (Ok, to be fair, they did have some rather nice but overpriced Merino socks.)

The lady in basic black may be more in tune with Paris culture than the Dodie in fluorescent yellow, but the lady does not look at all happy.

Dodie thinks these could be cycling tights?

So it went on our first full day in Paris. Back home we found that Didier's son Jeremy had dropped in. We first met Jeremy four years ago, and enjoyed going back to that old blog for him to review the photos we had showing him at the time.

Tomorrow we will have our second and last crack at Paris. There are still lots of areas we have not even breezed by on a bus: Montmartre, the Notre Dame Cathedral (hunchback of ...), and La Defense financial and shopping district. If we ever make it back to Nantes, we will need some long and tough cycling just to rest up!

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