Paris JournalI always keep a diary when I go on holiday, this one is slightly longer than usual as I was by myself and didn't have anyone to prattle at. Tuesday10.30 - Eurostar I navigated through miserable UK security and passport checks and then charming and polite French passport control. I boarded the 9.09 Eurostar a bit peeved to be sitting backwards and that my 'window seat' actually only featured about 3 inches of window, but alternately dozed and read. 2.30 - On Steps of Sacre Coeur I climbed steps to Sacre Coeur - small heart attack. Only one pair of Japanese tourists asked me to take a photo. Sacre Coeur is beautiful , I wish I had the faintest idea what stuff was - but lack of guide book and lots of French notices didn't help me. But everything was very pretty. I decided "what the hell, only here once" and bought a ticket to climb up to the dome.
The view from the top was probably worth it. Looking out over Paris I couldn't help but reconsider my earlier opinion that Paris might be a bit of a shithole. From all the way up there looking out over the sprawl of buildings and smog on a grey cloudy day - I decided that it's definitely a shit hole. 4.45 - Hotel I drifted through Montmartre in the direction of Couliquot, a boulangerie recommended by Jakob. These streets felt a little bit more like what Paris should feel like - narrow, windy, cobbled and with a lot of hills. I found the boulangerie without actually getting lost but also without seeing any of the mini-sites my book pointed out. Lunch was good - brioche and a bowl of hot chocolate, and I do mean bowl. I was somewhat intimidated eating by myself surrounded by French people and not really knowing what the etiquette was when it came to ordering, paying and tipping.
I took a quick diversion to see the Moulin Rouge which was pretty disappointing. I nervously approached the hotel but was delighted to find a cute little entrance, a friendly English speaking receptionist and an unexciting, but clean and large room. Neither the receptionist nor I could work out why I'd been put in a triple, but I wasn't complaining. Most importantly there was a TV with BBC world on it. I'm feeling a bit lonely and it's nice to have a quiet English babble in the background. I watched one of the French channels for about 5 minutes marvelling at the bad dubbing and was astounded to hear the 'chung chung' that indicated I was watching Law and Order! 10pm - Hotel
I arrived at the Arc de Triomphe to discover it wasn't quite dark enough for it to be lit up, so went for dinner. I tried, but I just couldn't get the courage to go to a restaurant and ended up in McDonalds. Fries were available with ketchup or mayonnaise but I wasn't going to drink the lager even just for novelty value. The arc was lit by the time I'd finished and it was quite beautiful, looming over the roundabout below it. After a bit of soul searching I bought a ticket and started climbing yet another spiral staircase. 280 steps later I collapsed on a bench and had a pleasant conversation with a Texan lady while we both got our breath back.
I ventured onto the Metro to get home and after a brief trauma involving getting change for a ticket made it back to 'Rome' without incident. I was impressed at the speed of it, but then I didn't have to change lines. Walking back to the hotel the area was a bit creepy - but then walking anywhere unfamiliar by yourself in the dark is a bit disturbing. Discovered the reason for smell of urine was that people seem to randomly pee in the streets. I acquired supplies at a supermarche, resisting the temptation to but half the chocolate and biscuit aisle. Plodded back to my room, had a pretty pathetic lukewarm shower and listened to the content on BBC world loop every 15 minutes. Wednesday11.25 - Pompidou Centre
I continued to drift and semi-accidentally found myself at Forum de Halles and concluded that I may as well change my itinerary completely and head on to Pompidou Centre. The gardens were a bit unexciting but St Eustache was another breath-taking huge church, full gothic columns and some beautiful paintings and sculptures too. I obtained a breakfast of banana and sugar crepe from a street seller and promptly dripped it down my t-shirt. It was huge, contained a spectacular amount of calories, cost just 2 quid and was truly amazing. This I could get used to.
1.30 - Square Jean XXIII I impulse bought 2 bread type thingies for lunch at a very French patisserie, which involved a lot of pointing and stuttered French. In search of somewhere to sit down I crossed a rather grotty looking Seinne and suddenly found myself in front of Notre Dame.
3.10 - Ile de la Cite I walked across to the Ile St-Louis and window shopped. Shopping without a credit card is quite a good adjustment, saved me buying the pretties that I didn't really need. Not much of note over there - nice shops, nice streets, nice mango sorbet. I walked back to Ile de la Cite stopping at the deportation memorial which was pleasantly understated and moving. Diverted to the left bank in search of Shakespeare and Co English bookshop only to discoverer it wasn't where my guidebook said it would be. This was the first downswing of the day. Saint Chappell had a huge queue for which apparently my magic pass didn't work. I didn't feel up to standing still that long so went in search of a bench and ended up at the Place de Pont Neuf at the end of the island. 6.00 - Louvre
I decided that Concorde might look better in the dark than in the present overcast dullness, so I headed back to the Louvre. The outside is amazing - beautiful courts and buildings which for some reason don't feel corrupted by the bloody great glass pyramid in it.
I dutifully went to see the Mona Lisa and was delighted to find that there were no queues and I could just walk straight up to it. I just don't get it - as portraits go it's ok, but I just don't see why it's rated above the dozens of other paintings in the wing. Ditto for the Venus de Milo which was harder to get a look at thanks to a terrible location and many people.
I entered the Richelieu Wing having accidentally walked straight through Sully Wing. I'm sat in the main French sculptures room, which is cleverely arranged across multiple levels so the views of the statues don't interfere with each other. Sadly this means stairs though and my legs are giving up. 9.40 - Hotel
I headed down the Champs de Lise in search of dinner and settled for an amazingly bland panini at a street café. I struggled home on the metro and just about made it to bed before collapsing. Thursday12.06 - Hotel des Invalids Gardens I successfully checked out and metroed to Trocedero. I suspect this area is supposed to be crowded with tourists and stalls, but at 9.15 it was empty and felt decidedly dead. I obtained hot chocolate which I promptly spilt down myself and stood marvelling at the Eiffel Tower - or rather the legs of the tower. Thanks to the delightful haze over the city everything above the first level was foggified giving a rather strange unfinished look. Even just the legs were suitably impressive though - it's really rather large. I walked across the jardins du Trocadero which would have been slightly more impressive if the fountains had been switched on, but would still not actually make it to nice.
I walked trough the Parc du Champs de Mars which were another set of unimpressive gardens - haven't the Parisians heard of grass and flowers? A cool monument at the end "celebrating peace" or some such was very nice and almost made up for the fact a giant marquee construction site was obscuring the Ecole Militaire.
2.21 - Jardin de Luxemburg
I did my usual art gallery trick of just drifting through only stopping to 'study' items when they were coincidentally located next to benches. The impressionist collections had a fair number of "hey I've seen that on a tea-towel" moments, but nothing really grabbed me. I took more time over the sculptures and there were some nice works there.
11pm - Home
I made a second attempt to get into St Chappell, but it had already closed - some things are just not meant to be. I sat in Notre Dame courtyard again listening to swing music playing from a street entertainer's radio, watching the sparrows in the hedge and taking photos for Japanese tourists.
There are more photos on my flickr account - I managed to reduce the 450 photos down to a more sensible number! |
I arrived in Paris 15 minutes late - how can a train with only 1 stop and speed restrictions be late? I escaped the station as fast as possible and walked in the direction of Sacre Coeur. My first impression - Paris is a bit of a shit hole. Is it my imagination or does the whole places smell of urine? I made it Sacre Coeur without getting lost. Go me. I Got accosted by a friendship bracelet dude but manage to heckle him down from 25E to 5 and only feel slightly stupid. 
A little bit of advice - if it looks a long way up from the ground, it's a very long way up once you're on the stairs. After 50 very narrow spiral stairs I begin to think that I may have made a bad decision. After 150 of them without so much as a landing I was pretty much beyond thinking about anything other than trying to keep breathing. In total it was 280 stairs up. The moment on the way down when confronted with a flight of stairs going up is probably going to rank amongst the worst moments in my life so far. 
I wandered away from Sacre Coeur feeling a little light headed and figuring that a cup of tea and ½ a muffin just wasn't going to cut it as breakfast and lunch. I drifted through Place du Tertre which my guidebook accurately described as "photogenic but bogus". I turned down about a dozen offers for portraits and resisted the urge to join the gaggle of tourists taking photos of a mime. Some of the artwork on display was actually quite tempting - particularly the oils. I even resisted going into the comfortably familiar looking Irish pub for lunch.
I continued west to Montmartre cemetery and eventually managed to find the entrance hidden under a road bridge. I like cemeteries; I find them peaceful and weirdly uplifting. I didn't like Montmartre though - don't laugh - it felt dead. There was no grass and very few trees. Many of the tombs were broken down and the random mixture of very old and very new graves had a disconcerting sense of recycling. I didn't stay very long and didn't join in the famous people hunting that was popular with the other tourists. 
I took a brief circuit through a park on the way. It had an amazing array of statues and what looked like ruins. It had a collection of joggers looping round and some sort of large jewish gathering near a pond made to look like a roman garden - bit bizarre. I eventually made it all the way to the Arc de Triomphe without getting lost, although I did stop to ask some gendarmes the way at one junction. They did a startlingly good impression of the Keystone cops when asked which way to go: two of them pointed in opposite directions and the third went "Eh?"
I decided that I didn't need to fake interest for anyone and skipped the museum completely and headed straight outside where the view was truly amazing. This is definitely the way to see Paris - from a height, at night when it's all lit up and twinkling. The traffic below scared me a lot - I don't understand how nothing collided!
Found the tourist centre and finally obtained my museum pass, I'd ordered it in advance through Eurostar but annoyingly had to pick it up at the tourist information centre.. Next stop was St Roch church which was pretty impressive, not least for the fact that there was no one else in it and it seemed to be just a local parish church. I walked across to the Royal Palace which was built for Cardinal Richelieu, I don't know whether the weird collection of columns in the courtyard was all about. I took a leisurely stroll through the colonnades and gardens which was nicely peaceful and had some pretty gardens. I loved the regimentally squared off trees. 
I waved my magic card to get into the Pompidou Centre without queuing - priceless! Took the escalators up to the top and discovered that Paris looks even worse than London on an overcast day. Smog blocked the view of most of the sites and the city just looked grey. I drifted around a couple of floors, mostly trying to find a way out. Some of the art was interesting, but I've never really been able to find much to study about modern art.
I made fairly swift work of the rest of the Pompidou Centre. Either I completely lost the plot or the non-library section is very small. I had another sit down at the Stravinsky Fountain with its weird moving fountain thingies. Popped into a 'small' church that didn't even rate a mention in my guidebook but was pretty epic.
I sat in the square amazed at the cathedral and the number of tourists alike. The inside was impressive - similar to the other 'small' churches I'd seen, but a notch up the scale. Major points for having guidebooks and signs in English! Very beautiful. I escaped the tourists and walked around the outside of the cathedral where you can really see them buttresses a flyin'. 
Following my near catatonic collapse I decided to skip St Chappelle and headed to the Louvre. I took a brief detour through gardens to see the "arch of moderate success" and caught my second glance of Eiffel Tower through the haze. I got accosted by about 20 
I entered said pyramid and only took fifteen minutes standing around looking lost and trying to work out the floor plan. The Louvre is my kind of museum - none of the labels are in English, so I don't have to feel guilty about not reading them. There are sometimes extra panels in English, but they're not very well written. I probably should have got an audio guide but that seemed like too much of a commitment. 
I skipped most of the paintings in favour of the sculptures which seem more worthwhile seeing in person. I was generally more impressed with the building itself - beautiful columns and spectacular painted ceilings throughout. 
I bummed around the Louvre for a bit but at 7 I concluded I'd seen about as much as I could take and various rooms were closing (despite the late opening). I departed via the subway thingy including the upside down pyramid, but with the shops closed and no light outside to illuminate it it was just rather dead feeling. I sat outside as the light went down and the lights of the pyramid came up, but had to move or risk setting solid when before they came up properly.
It turns out that sunset is something of a non-event when there's been no sun all day, I guess this was pretty predictable, but still a bit disappointing. The toilleries were closed, so I walked along the Seine hoping to cross back to the Obelisk and Place du Concorde. However it became obvious that this was not really going to be achievable thanks to traffic coming from all direction at great speed. It looked pretty lit up from afar though. I watched the lights on the Eiffel Tower come on and it too looked very pretty. That was until it started a kind of manic blinking fairy light routine.
I slept a pretty solid 9 hours and woke up just before my alarm at 8.30. I felt surprisingly good until I stood up and damn near fell flat on my arse. I shoved everything in my rucksack and tried not to think about how I was gonna have to carry it around for the next 8 hours. 
I loitered underneath the tower wondering if I could be bothered. I eventually concluded it would be daft to come to Paris and not actually go up the tower so bought a ticket for the 1st stage. The view kinda sucked but the tower itself was impressive and there were plenty of information/trivia boards with good English. I obtained a funny warm custard flan thing from the café and then waited forever for the cursed lifts and couldn't even take the stairs down because they were closed.
I plodded on to Hotel des Invalides which is really rather grand and holds the tomb of Napoleon. I sat in the garden which actually manages grass, trees, flowers and a only slightly stagnant looking pond and tried to muster the strength to move. 
I arrived at Musee d'Orsay and my magic pass worked. Again I was more taken by the building than its contents - it's a conversion of a turn of the century railway station. The space is used beautifully and there's plenty of light and space in the main gallery. Various features of the station have been left intact such as the clock and occasional carvings on the wall indicating "The Orient" and other destinations. 
Fortified with a nutella and banana crepe eaten on the steps outside I headed south to a couple more churches. St Germaine was older than most of the other churches, but much the same. St Sulpice was quite large and had a fountain. I finally found a proper garden in the shape of the Jardin de Luxemburg which not only has grass, trees, flowers, ducks, tinkling fountains but also men playing chess, palm trees and movable metal chairs allowing me to sit with my feet up. 
I pressed on to the Sorbonne which was an impressive rectangular building with twiddles on. I wandered through St Michel finding all the Greek and Asian restaurants huddling together for security. I finally found a proper patisserie and obtained a mountain of pastries to take home.
I metroed to Gare de Nord without incident and collapsed in the Eurostar lobby. The train was 10 minutes late, I was sitting backwards again and the journey seemed to drag on forever. I boarded a shiny new district line train to home wondering vaguely just how long I'd been away that they'd replaced the tube trains and made it home before collapsing in a graceless heap and completing my diary.