We've been swamped the last four days, so we're doing four updates simultaneously.
March 22nd - Day of 1,000 Steps.
We met John and Casey at the hotel after wandering our section of Paris a bit. We were staying at Modern Hotel De LaFayette at 60 Rue De LaFayette. It was a very nice place and we had a quadruple for ourselves with our own bathroom and towels and even daily cleaning service -- real luxury when you've been living out of a backpack and sharing rooms with people whose sinus-generated audio registers on the Richter scale in California.
So we dropped off all our bags and went for a bit of an afternoon outing. I suggested that a good generic 'first afternoon' activity was to hit the Metro, popping out at Concorde, walk the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe, and then climb the Arc. After that we'd wander around and see what else we wanted to accomplish before it got late.
We got on the Metro and emerged at Concorde. We meandered down the Champs Elysées and talked about how the city is now and how the walk is peppered with stores from all over the world, proving that they have 'made it' as a consumer item by having front space on that bit of earth.
Then, we climbed the Arc. (284 steps.)
We snapped a few pictures at the top, and we will try and do a major picture upload in the next week if possible.
Edit: Here´s a picture of the sign posted at the arc. We all wondered about the second symbol?
No Speedos!
Then we talked about the Eiffel Tower and decided to walk over and at least see it that night.
After a stop in a small pastry shop/café, we decided to try and go up the tower late that afternoon and wait there through nightfall, so that we could experience the views of the City of Light both by night and day.
So we found out we could save a lot of money by taking the stairs to the first and second levels (328 and 342 steps, respectively).
Thankfully for us, they won't let you climb the rest, you've got to use a lift.
For those of you with a penchant for math, you've realized that we've already climbed a total of 954 steps in just these three monuments, and this does not include any of the myriad staircases in the Metro, or the additional 66 steps to our 3rd floor hotel room.
So we broke 1000 steps on our first day in Paris. Which pretty much wore us out.
The Tower was beautiful though and we got some very cool night shots of the city.
One of 80's shots of Paris
After that, we headed back to the hotel (after a brief confusion over where the hell the Metro station was ("whattya mean Champs De Mars is above ground? I thought it was a subway?") and crashed, hard.
March 23rd - Laundry, Hidden Passages, and Cathedrals.
The next morning, John and I woke up early and went running. Since we hadn't seen Sacré-Coeur the previous night, we opted to run uphill until we found it. Once we found it (foolish, foolish boys that we are) we opted to try running the steps, all [we-don't-even-know-how-many-but-they-installed-a-tram-for-a-reason] of them. So that was foolhardy and painful, but rewarding since the morning view of the city was as gorgeous as dusk had been the previous day.
After we returned we spent a lazy morning eating pastries that we had brought back and sorting clothes so that we could make a much-needed laundry day of it. Once we had acquired fresh clothing, we ventured out again, this time in an attempt to find a series of covered passages that my mother had recommended to us.
We never did find them, but wound up meandering our way all the way down to Notre-Dame and visiting there. After that we went to dinner at a wonderful little place recommended to us by one of our friends from Mercer called Le Table Des Gourmets. It was located in an underground church and the food was plentiful and spectacular, from a prix-fix menu of 15 Euros.
I also introduced Adrienne to one of my family's traditional favorite drinks for special occasions, Kirs Royale. Always a treat worth making time to enjoy.
After that we walked back through the city and wound up walking up to Sacre-Coeur that evening to enjoy the night view of the city.
March 24th - Versaille, Wine, and Family Time
Another Lazy morning involving pastry (we would all be 10 lbs heavier when you see us next, if not for all the walking) and we were off for a day trip to see Versaille, one of the most expansive and intricate of the European palaces. It is, in every sense, a monument to the opulence of dead kings.
We had gone shopping in the morning and purchased traditional French lunch ingredients for a picnic -- a wheel of cheese, some salami, a couple small (375ml) bottles of wine--one red, one white, mustard, greens, and a baguette. We were prepared for a perfect French picnic, so of course it remained cold and rainy until late afternoon. Ah well, c'est la vie!
We wound up buying our Versaille entry tickets along with our RER tickets out to see the palace at the RER ticket booth in Invalides. We highly recommend this to anyone doing Versaille as a daytrip via public transportation. The train was comfy and had lots of space, and we saved about 15 euros off the total cost of the trip, once you included the Express Entry and the audio-tour that were included as part of the ticket we purchased for just 17 Euros (including train fare) via the RER booth.
We had a lovely time wandering through the palace in the morning and our lunch, under a covered walkway before the rain receded, was admired by all who passed by. They seemed suprised that we'd come so well equipped. After all, it isn't every day that tourists remember to bring wine-bottles and a corkscrew when out touring.
Picnic - Versailles
We had a great lunch, then wandered the gardens before returning to the city to change clothes and jump in the Metro for Edgar Quinet station in the south-central part of the city. There we met three of my cousins, and had a very typical Parisienne dinner, lots of courses with troublingly small (or large) amounts of food when you were expecting them, and garnishes both wierd and fantastic. It was a great meal, and really good to see friends I hadn't seen in a half-decade or more.
We finally left dinner around 23:00, and headed back to catch some sleep before our last day, prepared to see the Louvre and hopefully Orangie.
March 25th - Victims of the Louvre.
We repacked our bags and checked out after discovering that Ad and I would require another nights lodging in Paris -- our intended train to Sallanches was booked full due to the coming three day weekend -- and we then walked to this new place (which certainly seems interesting, more on it in the next post) and left our bags there (Ad's idea, I doubt they'll still be in one piece when we arrive tonight).
So after dropping of our bags, we headed for the Louvre and I took a much-needed break (stress related to my bankcard) while the three of them did the Louvre sprint-- Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, castle unearthered below, and AWAY!
A short 1.5 hours later they exited and we dropped our selves and our day packs in a park to eat our picnic lunch, then headed off to see if the Orangie museum would welcome us. We had heard that renovations had been begun 4 years ago, and that they were to be completed sometime in 2003, so we were dissapointed to find out that they are still in full swing and going strong. No luck there.
With only a few hours before John and Casey had to be on a train, we chose to go up into the north part of the Pigalle district and see where Moulin Rouge was filmed, in and around the original Cabarét/Theatre.
We were entertained to notice a group of children using their winter jackets as kites in the late afternoon heat. They'd found a Metro-vent for the station near us, and every time a train entered the station, it would build up enough air that the children could toss their jackets out and they would be carried on the wind high into the air above them. I think I managed to capture a couple of good pictures of this, hopefully you'll see them soon as well.
After that we wandered up to the Montmarte square and admired some of the sketching there before heading back down into the heart of the city. We went back with John and Casey and they picked up their baggage and we said our goodbyes. They were headed for the Metro to Paris Austerlitz station, with tickets for a night-train to Madrid.
We then returned to Sacre-Coeur (there's those blasted steps again) for the sunset and then Good Friday mass, which was beautiful. We enjoyed the service, even if most of it was unintelligble to our untrained ears. The combination of intoned French and occasoinal liturgical Latin is harmonious even in the absence of comprehension.
We're headed back to our B&B now, hopefully to catch some sleep and have a wonderful breakfast before heading off to catch our TGV to the French Alps at 9:30.
AuVoir!
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