Well, my friends, a lot has happened since my last blog post. Time continues to feel like a lie. I have slept eight nights in Paris, but it feels like much longer.
Starting at my layover in Doha, I have journaled 65 pages in the last nine days, not counting any pages where it is mostly just tickets, polaroids, or postcards. Considered yourselves spared! There is a lot to take in, and if I didn’t filter it out through the process of writing, I’m sure I would rupture at the seams.
Even so, I have struggled to find the brief path with this one. So, I am going to begin with the basic outline for anyone who wants a ‘no-details’ update.
This is what I did, and some highlight meals:
Wed- Arrived!
Thurs- L’église (Church) Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, the Seine, wandering, Musée d’Orsay
Fri- Louvre, and crêpes- savoury and sweet!
Sat- Best meal- Paleron ; Le Petit Palais, Notre-Dame de Paris, Shakespeare and Company book store, Le Panthéon, Le Jardin des Tuileries
Sun- Eiffel Tower (beneath and surrounding gardens), L’Arc de Triomphe, Av. des Champs-Elysées
Mon- Montmarte: La basilique de Sacré-Cœur, Place du Tertre – had crème brulée that was amazing!; Musée de l’Orangerie, Eiffel Tower (climb)
Tues- Departure
For those who don’t continue on, there are some new features to this blog. Firstly, I have narrowed down my Paris trip photos and made a Gallery for them on this blog- you can find it under the ‘Gallery’ tab or by clicking here.
You can now also sign up to a mailing list to get my blog post delivered to your email, instead of having to check the site. Also please note my new “Read time” widget that estimates how long a post will take to read, because I think it’s great and it took me a bit to figure out how to do all these things. I am pleased that my basic blog is a little bit less basic!
Alright, now a bit more detailed update.
I was determined to take the slow path for this trip, to not rush my way through everything like I could never come back again. My town for the upcoming months is only an hour away by train, so return visits on weekends are completely plausible.
I think I started off on the right vein. Instead of grabbing a taxi, my first point of call was to sort out a Navigo Decouverte or public transport card. I waited in what seemed to be a non-moving line for about a half hour, when a staff member came along and closed off the line right in front of me. We were all told to hop back on a shuttle to go to the next train terminal and the service desk there. But I wasn’t in a hurry, so it was fine, off I went.
At this point, I became an unofficial guide to two Mexican girls with the same undertaking. Between their broken English, my broken Spanish, and a little help from offline Google Translate, we managed to do quite well. We all got our cards and took two out of my three trains together. Three trains meant the long way round, but it was simple to remember, and I didn’t have internet to map everything out with.
The card was the way to go, because it cost me 30 euros for the whole week, able to jump on and off any public transport service in all 5 zones of Paris as I liked. A taxi ride from the airport was estimated to cost around 50 euros.
I lugged my suitcase up many stairs, found my AirBnB, and slept for about eleven hours.
On Thursday, after a slow start of paperwork for my work program, I visited l’Eglise Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis – the Church of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis – completely on accident after taking a wrong turn. It was pretty but I left fairly quickly as there were people actually trying to pray there and it felt weird and intrusive.
My actual aim had been a phone store, which I did find in the end, but I couldn’t open up the account I wanted without French banking numbers (this turned out ultimately to not be true, but that’ll probably be in my next post). I settled for wifi-hopping while I was in Paris. A large chunk of my day having grown legs and wandered off, I felt like I had to forfeit my plan for the Louvre, so I walked along the Seine, to get my bearings and make a plan. I saw the Musee d’Orsay across the river, so I that was where I headed.
And it ended up being my favourite museum! I loved all the impressionist work on 5th floor, and the statues of Jean-Baptiste Carpeux and the paintings of Ernest Meissonier on first. Meissonier was a man looked down on for being a ‘genre’ or ‘everyday life’ painter – but his intense focus on detail and realistic portrayals of light was so impressive to me. Also, I don’t usually go in for art with people in it, so the fact that these two won me over says something.
There was also a very good temporary exhibit, which was a huge double-series of paintings that sequentially told a story.
Twice on Thursday, I ordered something with chicken. I did not eat any chicken that day. My fault, of course, in retrospect, but it was very confusing at the time.
All I did on Friday was be at the Louvre until my feet felt like they were going to fall off. Then I got crepes and went home. The Louvre could probably be its own post but suffice to say, I was completely unprepared. I knew it was big, but I didn’t really grasp to what extent. I think you need to plan to get the most out of your visit – the good news is, I can try again another weekend! That said, it was not a lost cause. I saw the Mona Lisa (apparently about 80% of visitors only come to see the Mona Lisa, which is tragic to me), the statues courtyard which I loved, various statues of Artemis/Diana- Goddess of the Hunt in Greek/Roman mythology as well a series of statues on the rest of the Hunt, historical crowns and other jewellery, and so much more!
Saturday was meant to be my slow day. I didn’t leave the flat until lunchtime. I ate my best meal in Paris – a dish called le Paleron, at the recommendation of the waitress. I lingered over lunch for a good hour, before heading off with the intent to see Notre-Dame. As I was changing trains, I saw a sign to Le Petit Palais (The Little Palace) and thought “Why not?” So I went there instead. I thought it was just a single-floor building, but it turns out there’s a basement and it is a whole other free gallery basically. I quite enjoyed it, and there was another beautiful Monet.
Then I returned to my Notre Dame plan (decided to leave the crypt for another time), followed by a long stop at Shakespeare and Co., a famous English bookshop in Paris, where I had to queue because they could only let so many people in at a time for safety reasons. I got a huge kick out of having to line up to enter a bookstore. So many people wanting to look at books! What a great day! Fantastic reading/writing room upstairs, which I enjoyed for a while. Then I continued on to the Pantheon, which you just look at from outside, before returning back down the long streets and cutting through les Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden) to a train station.
So my slow day ended up being my highest step count for this trip: 19,660 steps. It was also the first day it didn’t rain and I actually had dry feet.
I was tired so I ordered a take-away pizza that night, tripped over my French about six times even though I knew exactly what I needed to say, and the only good news is that after that train wreck of language I still got my pizza.
Having failed in my attempts to slow down, I spent most of Sunday at the flat, catching up on my journaling from the day before that I had been too tired to do, listening to movie soundtracks and the church bells, and eating bread and cheese. But it felt too ungrateful to completely have a home day while on a trip in Paris, and there were still things on my list that I wanted to do this time, so I headed out that afternoon to the Eiffel Tower.
Friends, the Eiffel Tower has been so underrated to me. I know that sounds ridiculous, but honestly, I expected to rock up and be like, “Yeah, it looks like the pictures.” Which, of course, it does. But nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of actually standing- not even under it, not even climbing it, just being in a 50-metre radius maybe. It’s huge and looming, and it is beautiful. The way the metalwork is weaved and the patterns in it, and the curled design in the arches. Could not get enough.
What’s more, when you enter at Gate 1 or the west side, and you take the little path back before the Tower itself, you end up in a magical place known simply as the West Garden. It’s like Hobbits and Elves got together to work on a meeting place. There is a fencework there made to look like tree branches, and then there are big steps leading up over a small cave that have marks like tree rings. The flowers have been allowed to grow big and wild- true of many places in Paris actually, and they do it so well. I sat and read the whole online guide to the Tower while enjoying that little garden. The summit was closed, so I opted out of climbing and told myself I’d come back some weekend.
I headed on to L’Arc de Triomphe, which was beautiful, though in a very different way. Nearly watched two tourists die trying to cross the road, so I committed to finding the underground tunnel over to the arc. The line to climb was long and my feet had been brutalised, so I looked around the ground level. I was able to read a speech given by Charles de Gaule during WW2, and admittedly cried a little there too.
Then I finished off the day by walking down Champs-Elysees, which is someone else’s idea of paradise- Elysee coming from Elysium, the Greek/Roman mythology equivalent of heaven/paradise. But I have been now, and if I ever have a burning desire to by an overpriced jacket, I’ll know where to go.
For my final full day (Monday) in Paris, I went to Montmarte, which was where my flat was actually, so it was a short hop over to Place de Tertre, made longer by many, many stairs. It was very busy and crowded, so I kept moving on to Sacre-Coeur, the large cathedral that overlooks Paris from its place on the hill. You can only take pictures in certain directions inside, but it is generally very beautiful.
After I had looked around inside, I paid to climb up the dome, despite the fact that I had already brutalised my feet… but it was only about 300 steps which didn’t sound like too much – and it was perfectly fine and in fact up was much better than down. The steps have been worn away, each with a smooth, shiny dip from thousands of feet and I was sure I was going to slip. But while I was up the top, it was lovely. It was fun to look out and try to identify the different places I had been around town.
After that, it was still early, so I headed back towards the centre, and lined up for the Musee de l’Orangerie. Generally, it is advisable to pre-book tickets for everything in Paris but that didn’t fit with my slow travel, “I am decidedly not in a rush” mentality. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t try to use to free museum wifi to try to buy tickets while I was standing in line- only that it never worked! But I had been listening to The Hobbit audiobook all around the city- on trains, at the flat, around museums sometimes – and so I finished all but the last ten minutes of it in that line (I listened to that last bit after I left the museum). I started off in the large Waterlily rooms, with Monet’s huge wall murals. They were due to close early for maintenance, otherwise I would have left them ‘til last and probably sat there ‘til closing. The main gallery is two floors down, and I discovered some wonderful Renoirs, and a few landscapes by Cezanne that I loved. This trip was really very much about art, and I loved it.
Closing time came all too soon, and I decided to head back to the Eiffel Tower – I didn’t think to take even a single polaroid picture the day before.
And wouldn’t you know it- the summit was open! The Eiffel Tower has 674 steps between its two stair-access floors, and Sacre-Coeur had been easy enough, so I figured I could do that twice. Well, I was enjoying the design of it all so much, I didn’t really notice the steps and had a great time. It got dark while I was up there, so I saw the city in daylight and all lit up too, which was a nice unplanned happenstance as well. I had taken a photo of the Eiffel Tower from Sacre-Coeur, and I got to take one going back the other way as well.
It was the perfect way to finish up my Paris trip. After that, it was just packing and figuring out trains, but that moves on to a different part of the story.
I don’t know how well I managed to stick to the slow path. I definitely got sucked into the idea that I was going to miss out if I didn’t rush sometimes. But I still think it was a fairly reasonable itinerary.
If you have any suggestions for my next trip to Paris, let me know!
