Paris

First thing first: I had an amazing time and am very happy that I went. Right up to Saturday I wasn't certain if I should go because of my essay approaching. But the four day break was a good thing to relax me before exams start with all the attendant stress and worries and sleepless nights.

We landed at Paris Beauvais Airport which is actually an hour and a bit outside of Paris. A shuttle bus runs from the airport to a parking lot outside of the Place de Congres (which seems like the middle of nowhere when you first get there.) We tried to figure out the Metro system but because we didn't know the nearest stop to our hostel it was impossible to know which line to take. The only unhelpful person we met during our whole stay was the woman working the Metro ticket booth that night, she wouldn't help us pick a route and when I asked for a map of the Metro system she snorted, "Quelle ligen, il y n'a plusieurs." If you won't tell us which line we need, how can I tell you which map I need?!

First night we walked around and stumbled on the Eiffel Tower totally by accident. (We had seen it all lit up from the highway on the way in to Paris, but not from up close.) The hostel was only 10 minutes from the Tower but we couldn't see it at all. Then there it was, framed between two buildings as we walked along the road. Every hour the whole tower has flashing lights all over. (Hard to describe, every hour thousands of white light bulbs flash randomly for 10 minutes as every epilectic in Paris runs for cover.

On the second day we walked for 13 hours straight. In order we saw: Eiffel Tower, The Arc de Triumphe, Champs Elysees, Place de Concorde, Rue Rivoli, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Ile Saint Louis, The Seine up close but not personal, mass in Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, lots of streets when we got lost, and the Eiffel Tower again. I have to admit I was dissappointed with some things, like the Champs Elysees and Rue Rivoli and to a lesser extent Notre Dame. The famed streets were not lined with all the expensive stores I thought would be there, we saw a few car dealers like Land Rover, one large Louis Vuitton store (probably their flagship store) and a Cartier jewellers. There was about six lanes of traffic across and therefore rather loud. Rue de Rivoli was an even bigger disappointment because it just seemed to have tacky and overpriced tourist stores. I was expecting something like Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue I guess. Also there are no chic Parisennes, they look just like you and me. Lunch bag letdown.

The Louvre was absolutely breath taking. The building is massive and a work of art in its own right. We spent two and a half hours, almost three hours, in there and saw most of the highlights. There were Napoleon's apartments, the Mona Lisa. the Raft of the Medusa, Venus de Milo, Nike of Samothrace (WInged Victory), and the few Crown Jewels that remain. But each room has so many things that you get overwhelmed and just can't take it all in. Everything is more beautiful and intricate than the last and the sheer number of masterpieces is mindboggling. I saw so many paintings that I have only ever seen reproduced in books that they all started to blur. I knew the Mona Lisa was small, and it was beautiful to behold, but I wouldn't count it as the most mind-blowing painting but the most crowded and hard to view. There was a Renaissance tripych showing a saint with a clever embedded in his head, more representations of Saint Sebastien than I ever saw even in a cathedral and just so many other things I could no more describe than swallow the ocean. Nike was larger than I thought and the statue's placement was good. It's in a stairwell which allows many people to look at her at the same time. Being elevated you look at the statue the way it is meant to be viewed. I liked her better than Venus. Venus is a very stationay statue. (Oxymoron, I mean there is no sense of movement or emotion in her.) Yes, she is impressive and yes, she is very beautiful but perhaps because she is so well known you get a sense of deja-vu. 

Notre Dame is more beautiful outside than in. The rose windows were breathtaking, absolutely massive. There all many tiny chapels ringed around the entire church, each with beautfil altars and paintings. Because we were there at the end of November it wasn't mobbed with tourists, so you could take you time and see things without getting overrun. Priests were available for confession, each of them spoke 6 different languages. But between the three of us, all raised Catholic, we couldn't come up with the complete Act of Contrition. (Not a good sign.) Unfortunately we were 7 minutes too late to get out onto the towers. The catacombs beneath had a sign "Open every day" with little printing beneath "Mondays Excepted" so we couldn't go down either. Waling around the back and seeing all the flying buttresses and the gargoyles is neat. Size-wise it is smaller than York Minster and Saint Paul's, but it is so well known and the architecture is pretty amazing. It always blows me away how many people helped build it, many of them never living to see the completed project because it took hundreds of years. It is very humbling to realise that every worker, from the architect down to the mortar mixers, are anonymous and wanted to remain so because they were building the cathedral to the glory of God and not their own glory.

My friend Jenn recommended Ile de Saint Louis for its ice cream stores. It has very up-scale restaurants and food shops. Just wandered around and bought food for dinner (and an ice cream for me.) We had dinner (rosee wine, crackers and Cambembert cheese) beside the Seine and just across from Notre Dame. After dinner we all went to 6:15 mass in Notre Dame. It wasn't very full being a Monday but it the atmosphere was amazing. We sat close to the altar and had a magnificent view. The accoustics made it hard to understand the sermon (and I was kind of watching the light play on the glass in the rose windows) but it was a once in a lifetime experience.

We found the Latin Quarter by chance and just walked around. The restaurants are all pretty cheap, with alot of Middle Eastern food and other ethnic cafes. We would up kind of lost when we detoured to take pictures of the Pantheon (where Marie Curie is buried). But it was neat to walk the streets at night. (On our arrival night we walked for a few hours too). I never felt threatened, all the streets were very well lit and quite clean for a city of that size. 

Bought some more wine and went back to the Eiffel Tower hoping to be able to get to the top. It was closed for the night so we drank our wine in the park beneath it (Parc de Mars). While we were there a group of guys came along and one of them wanted to have his picture taken with me! He gave me a rose and keep asking and we kept refusing. Finally I showed him the ring on my right ring finger and told him I was married. Boy, did he lose interest quickly! He let me keep the rose though. (There are people handing them out for a Euro to all the tourists and it looked a little bedraggled. That night I accidently dropped my overnight bag on it so it looked even worse. Oh well.)

OUr second day was the morbid day. We mastered the Metro and went to see the catacombs. It is unbelieveable how huge they are, stretching under most of Paris. When Paris started to massively expand in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries old graveyards were dug up and all the bones reinterred in the catacombs. We saw tens of thousands of bones. Retaining walls of skulls and long leg bones were mortared into place and all the other bones deposited behind. There are some decorative crosses and altars made of skulls and set into the bone walls. You weren't allowed to take pictures (I really don't know why you want to anyway) and your bags were searched on the way out to make sure you weren't taking a souvenir skull home. Masses for the dead are said at a special altar (made of marble, not bones) at certain times during the year. 

Then we went to Sacre Coeur. It is a church on top of a hill overlooking Paris. In church terms it is very new, consacrated in the early twentieth century. Decoratively it looked Victorian with its huge Jesus staring down from the ceiling and the four archangels surrounding him. From there we walked into to village of Montmartrye. It obviously got swallowed up by Paris but still has a village atmosphere. (The neightbourhood you go through to reach Sarce Coeur is really rough looking.) From there we walked to Montmartrye Cemetary. I was all for wandering around the mausoleums but my friends were tired and hungry. A huge tribe of feral cats live in the cemetary, everywhere you look there is a new one staring back at you. I took some pictures only to get home and discover I already had some of them from different Internet sites.

Only a block away from Montmartrye Cemetary is Moulin Rouge and the Red Light District. We wandered around, had a 'sandwiche grec' because it was our "recommended things" list. Heather and Annie had wanted to return after dark but once we'd seen the Red Light district in the daylight it was unanimously decided that we didn't need to see it after dark. It started to rain so we decided to take in a museum. The Musee D'Orsay had a line-up half a mile long so we went to the Hotel des Invalides instead.

The Hotel actually houses several museums and Napoleon's tomb. We ran out of time to see the war museum but we did see the Musee de Liberation (bizarrely it wasn';t about the French Revolution) and a display on the Vichy deportations. Then we went to see Napoleon. His tomb is the gaudiest and most overblown thing I have ever seen. An entire section of a church is devoted to him. The coffin (the outer one at least, apparently there are five different ones) is so huge that he has to be lying in it widthwise instead of lengthwise. Surrounding the coffin are 12 'Victories", Victorian pseudo-Greek statues of women representing his great military victories. Napoleon's heir and three of France's greatest generals are in antechambers off the main rotunda of Napoleon. The Church was built in the late 17th century and you can't actually get into it  but it has some great baroque frescoes and sculpture. Even the area where Napoleon is (ahem) worshipped has some amazing ceiling frescoes but they are overpowered by the dead man's hubris.

Last night there so we went up the Eiffel Tower. We went all the way to the top and looked out over Paris at night. Amazhow how far the city sprawls. Before we went up we drank champagne in the Parc de Mars so we were alittle giddy. On every level of the Tower are gift shops, really bizarre but understandable. A keychain that was 50cent on the ground was 3 Euro on the Tower so keep your wallets safe. We walked around every level but the third and highest level was the most impressive.

Last day we onyl had a few hours so we went shopping. I wasn't overly impressed, didn;t see anything that looked any different from what you could buy in Canada. The Sephora stores I went into are even smaller than the one in Toronto so that was a let down. Took the shuttle back to the airport. France is very flat (at least Oise is) and the fields are much larger than in Ireland. It has a very cultivated look, not at all like Ireland that still looks wild and untamed in the West. 

Beauvais is an unbelievably small airport, there are three 'gates' which are just doors side by side onto the tarmac. One good thing with the new ban on lighters on planes is that no one can smoke past security anymore which made the wait more pleasant. All in all I had a great time, the weather was nice and the plane rides were fine. Not sure if I would want to go back though. I think if I ever go back to France I would want to see the country outside of Paris.