Ugh. So. I was really trying to keep up. I promise. Promise as in I have intended to sit down and write this post for the past four days, but every time I turn on my computer I get sidetracked with travel planning because that is a thing I do. Good news though! It means I have reservations all the way to Lisbon in mid-June (and a few more places I’ll share later), which is a bit of a weight off my shoulders, because as long as I make it to Lisbon for my exam, nothing else is really important. It was a bit touch and go there because the French train system isn’t as friendly to Eurail as everybody else, but as soon as I figured out a route to Barcelona it was all downhill from there.
Anyway, enough about the future. I’m sure you’re all curious about what I’ve been up to in Paris the last week or so. It’s been jam-packed, as usual when I travel, but in a rare turn of events I haven’t been leaving too early in the mornings. I usually wake up, have a free breakfast of yogurt and baguettes at the hostel, knick a a baguette and a few slices of cheese so that it becomes free lunch as well, and then head out around 9:30 or 10:00. By usually I actually mean every day though, so… always.
Anyway, Friday started out with doing battle at the train station and the Barcelona drama. Basically, they made me buy a ticket. Or wanted me too. I actually bought it online the next day for like… two-thirds the price they quoted me. But that’s taken care of now, so moving on.
Even though my hostel isn’t exactly close to the city center, I’d decided to spend my first day walking to get a better feel for the city. The train station was about half an hour from my hostel. The Paris Story Cinema and Palais Garnier, better known as the Paris Opera House, was another half hour from that. A third half hour would bring me to the Ile-de-la-Cite: the island not far from the Louvre containing Saint-Chapelle and La Conciergerie and Notre Dame. It sounded like a nice walk, but in actuality… I wasn’t terribly impressed. It also didn’t take an hour and a half, but that wasn’t the walk’s fault.
First and foremost, let me make it clear that I in no way got lost. I was actually right on course the entire time. No sooner had I arrived at the Opera House, however, than I was asked for directions to the Louvre. Now, you would think that would only be a distraction of a few seconds, but you would be wrong. The man who had asked, in English, then asked about my accent and somehow struck up a lovely conversation that lasted for something like two hours… His name is Orvil and he teaches religion and philosophy to high schoolers in Putney, London, the neighborhood where I went to that comedy show last week. He also loves the NBA. So we had a long talk about basketball and politics and education and got a bit distracted, then exchanged emails and went on our separate ways. It was one of those strange interludes that only ever seems to happen when traveling.
Anyway, I did eventually make it to the Paris Story, even if it was no longer morning. I got there on the half hour though, and the show only started on every hour, so I took the opportunity to eat my packed lunch on the steps of the opera and buy an ice cream cone from the Lindt Chocolatier before heading into the cinema. The Paris Story is an hour long film about the history of Paris, which I thought would be a good introduction to the city. It was very French, to be sure, narrated as a conversation between some unidentified “great poet” and the personified city herself. Being told the history of Paris from “Paris’” point of view was a bit excessively artistic and avant garde to my American tastes, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Afterward, I continued my walk to the Louvre, thinking I would just skip Ile-de-la-Cite and see it another day, except I got to the Louvre a bit earlier than I intended. You see, this day had been precisely planned for the Louvre. While youths (under 25) from the EU get in free to the Louvre at all times, all the other youths (like me) only get in free on Fridays after 6:00pm. Since the museum doesn’t close on Fridays until 9:45pm though, that still gives you nearly four hours free if you’re willing to skip the parties to see some awesome art. And I am.
But it wasn’t 6:00 yet. So I weighed my options and decided I could make it to Notre Dame and back in time. In hindsight, this might not have been the best decision. Did I mention I was wearing my Paris shoes? By which I mean the hand-crafted suede ones I bought in Cyprus so the Parisians wouldn’t judge me for wearing sneakers. They’re very comfortable... except when you walk long distances. Alas.
I did make it to Notre Dame though, and through the line, and through the Cathedral. I did not, however, pay the extra money to go into the Treasury. I liked the freeness of it all, and while I had enough time to take a leisurely stroll through the Cathedral, I didn’t want to push it with relics from which I would feel I needed to get my money’s worth. Besides, the Cathedral was more than enough. Grand and gothic and gorgeous. It would have benefited from fewer tourists talking less, but it bothered me less there than most places, probably because of how much I adore a good old church.
Following Notre Dame, I booked it back to the Louvre for my 6:00 appointment with free entry. Have I mentioned how much I love free things? I had heard the Louvre would take two full days, but I also have a limited time in Paris and a limited amount of money, so though I had set aside a second day if necessary, I was kind of hoping to speed my way through, stopping only at the requisite pilgrimage sites and where something caught my attention to the point I couldn’t pass it by. That, it seems, is easier said than done.
I was actually proud of the time I was making. For those of you who don’t know, I get distracted easily by pretty things. And the things at the Louvre? They’re the prettiest. I particularly enjoyed the French painting and Greek sculpture areas. People aren’t exaggerating when they say it’s the best museum in the world. The thing is, I’m not even sure it’s all about the art. For those who don’t know. the Louvre is called the Louvre because it is located in the Louvre Palace, one of the old seats of the French monarchy. I would just like to say that palaces are where art is meant to be seen. I realize that the whitewashed plainness of galleries today is meant to highlight the art and not its surroundings, but there is something far more breathtaking about a row of masterful statues lining a grand gallery of marble lined in towering arches and intricate capitals.
So it was beautiful, but there was one problem; it was also a maze. Needless to say then, I kept getting lost. Which in and of itself is fine, because who doesn’t want to be lost in a maze of stunning art? The problem with the maze though was that it meant a lot of walking. And I mean a lot. And did I mention I had been walking all day? In my bad shoes? So I was a bit cranky. But art! Anyway, I wandered in pain for a while until I happened upon the Venus de Milo, which was a nice surprise, and gave me an idea. Not a particularly inspired idea, but an idea nonetheless.
I decided, lost as I was, to try to find the Mona Lisa, enjoy what I saw along the way, and then try to make my way out. Again easier said than done, because I was so far away that the Italian painters section wasn’t even on the maps I was running into. That’s how big the Louvre is. They can’t even fit all of the sections on one map. So I wandered until it started showing up, and then made my way in that direction, started noticing that while still beautiful, I didn’t like the Italians nearly as much as their French counterparts, and finally found the Mona Lisa. It was nice? Maybe I wasn’t as impressed as I should have been. Maybe I was just tired. If I could have found it easily I would have taken another round with the French gallery though, tired or not, so I’m airing on the side of not just tired.
At any rate, the Mona Lisa seen I decided I was done. When I checked the clock though, it wasn’t as late as I might have expected, and it was still my first full day in Paris. So I made another stupid decision. That morning at breakfast I had met a Canadian guy who had the most brilliant idea. We were talking about the Eiffel Tower, and how much I wanted to climb the stairs, and he suggested I do it at night as well as during the day, because it was beautiful at night too. I didn’t want to pay for two climbs. His response? “So climb it just before sunset and get both.”
Well, by my calculations, I had just enough time to walk to the Eiffel Tower and up it before sunset. Keep in mind, the sun sets late here, and the Eiffel Tower wasn’t exactly close. But once I had the idea I was determined. Besides, the walk was along the Seine! I started to really regret my decision about halfway there, but I kept going, passing a monument to Thomas Jefferson, stopping to take a picture for a French couple who didn’t realize I knew almost no French until afterwards, and giving wrong directions to an Indian guy who hit on me. I still maintain he deserved it.
When I finally did make it to the Eiffel Tower, exhausted and thinking my feet might be broken, I had a rude surprise. Either everyone had the same idea I did or else it’s always that busy. I expect that latter, but after a quick poke around in which I could see very little through the throngs of people, I joined a line for tickets up the West Tower, where I could clearly see a set of stairs. The good news is I had estimated sunset a lot earlier than it actually was, so I had time to wait. The bad news - nay, the heartbreaking news - was that an hour later, when I’d made it two-thirds of the way to the front of the line, I was finally at an angle that allowed me to see *drum roll* the sign for the stairs.
As it turns out, I was in an elevator only line, with enough time to make it up the elevator before the sun went down, but not near enough time to wait again through the equally long stair line and climb said stairs while it was still light out. And if I had to choose, I would rather see the view during the day. So I was in a bit of a pickle. Did I leave and come back another day? Sacrifice my day view for a chance to climb the stairs? Just suck it up and buy the more expensive elevator ticket I didn’t even want? Well, I went with the last one, because maybe that was the universe’s way of telling me I was too tired for however many hundreds of stairs there were. I went with the cheaper ticket to the second floor instead of the top though, because at that point I was in a terrible mood and the crowd was getting to my anxiety and it was another hour wait for the elevator (no stairs available) from the second floor to the top anyway.
Is it a given that I didn’t really find it all that spectacular? I took some pictures, and picked out some sights, but I think panoramic views of cities have gotten old for me. I like the climbing up to them bit, and I especially like sitting at the top of like… cliffs and things. But man made structures like towers and ferris wheels have started to get less and less exciting for me with every successive ascent, no matter where or how high. Alas, at least I’m learning these things about my preferences, yeah?
So I took the stairs down at least, because that was an option, even if not as fun of an option as stairs up, and set out across the river for the metro station on the other side. I had made a lot of stupid decisions that day, but walking home was not going to be one of them. On the opposite bank of the river I stopped for a moment to take a picture and no sooner had I turned on my camera than, without any warning, the tower started flashing. I learned later that’s something it does at the top of every hour once the lights come on at night, but it was a nice surprise. I took it as an apology and went on my way feeling slightly better.
Before I could actually make it to the metro station as planned, however, I got distracted again. Are you noticing a theme? It wasn’t a person this time, but rather an event. There was a large plaza between the Eiffel Tower and metro station that had been filled with lights and tents and things. I’d seen it from the tower, but it was only once I got closer that I found out what it was: the World Slalom Series.
So if I had thought about it, I probably would have expected this to be a sport, but I hadn’t thought about it. See how traveling opens up horizons? What I gathered from watching is that there are two types of inline skating slalom, freestyle and speed. The first of which is a bit like figure skating through and around a series of small cones without hitting any of them, and the second of which is pretty much what it sounds like. If you’re interested, I highly recommend looking it up on youTube. I was certainly interested, and so I stopped to watch. And watch, and watch, and watch.
So, a couple hours later after I had seen skaters from France, Poland, Russia, Korea, China, Spain and probably a few other places besides, the title went to a French skater and I decided midnight was far too late for me to still be out. It was all very exciting and official, but I had spent ages there when, as we know, I was already exhausted. So I finally caught the metro home, and I don’t think anyone wonders why I didn’t post that night. In truth, it’s for the best I didn’t, because my outlook on Paris would have been bleek. I’d seen some pretty things, but I had yet to discover why so many people loved the city so much. That was what I discovered on Saturday.
My day Saturday started with a trip to the catacombs. Now, I knew embarrassingly little about the Paris catacombs before going, but I had enjoyed the ones I’d been to in Alexandria and Rome, and the tickets weren’t too expensive even before my student discount. (Please nobody tell the French I graduated.) Even so, when I arrived to find that the wait to get in was three hours long I almost abandoned the idea. I’d already made the trip out though, and most of my plan for the day consisted of visits to graveyards and parks that could be cut or shortened, and the wait was outside anyway, and it was a gorgeous day, and I had the forethought to wear my sneakers instead of my Paris shoes, and I had my kindle in my bag. So I read State Department prep stuff for three hours while the line inched its way 360 degrees around an entire city block.
I’m really glad I did.
What no one told me, and what I had not taken the initiative to find out beforehand, was that the Paris catacombs contain the largest concentration of human remains in the world; six million people in roughly 1.8 square kilometers. I read this on one of the info panels on the way down and my mind made that funny face a puppy makes when it doesn’t understand why you’re upset. I had seen catacombs, and there was no way six million tombs would fit in 1.8 square kilometers. Even if you combined tombs for families, let’s say large families of an average of six, there’s no way one million tombs in that space either. Well, the solution I was soon to find was that they didn’t build everyone a tomb. The entire catacomb was the tomb, and they were all sharing.
The bones were stacked, piles upon piles stretching for ages, more or less forming the walls of the path you were walking, no barriers in between. It was disconcerting at first, but then kind of… personal, despite the anonymity and with a few exceptions. The first of these was one of the employees who sat in the catacombs in case anyone needed help or tried to damage the bones. He had found me in the tunnel on the way down and told me some stories and showed me some of the things I would have seen anyway and then tried to ask me out. Except he was twice my age and really creepy - so I said no. The second was a pair of girls who came sprinting through shouting about how it was the worst most boring thing they had ever done and ugh couldn’t it just end already. I understand not liking the experience, but six million dead people? Have some respect. From their conversation, which I had no choice but to overhear, creepy guy had hit on them too. I didn’t have much sympathy.
Overall though, the catacombs were definitely worth it, and definitely worth skipping the graveyards and lengthening my day. So what if I’d meant to call it an early night? I was enjoying myself again, and so set out to explore Paris with a new and improved attitude. This might have had something to do with the weather too, which was only getting better, and the fact that my first stop after the catacombs was a park. I love parks. And this one was definitely in my top three parks ever.
Luxembourg Gardens, just a few short blocks north of the catacombs, surround Luxembourg Palace, now the seat of French Parliament. The park gardens far more than politicians though. I was there on a Saturday, and the park was crowded beyond belief. The way it was structured however, accompanied by the massive amounts of greenery, flowers, and well planned space, meant even me and my crowd anxiety didn’t mind. There were children racing rented remote control boats on a large pond, a reggae band throwing a free concert in a public gazebo, even a Glee tribute flash mob, all amidst some of the most beautiful sculptures I’ve ever seen in a public space.
I could have stayed there all day, and indeed I spent a great deal more time than I had planned. Mostly because I got lost looking for the bathrooms, speaking of which! So, I know they say Paris is the city of love, and the French are more liberal and things like that, but being here does provide some entertaining examples of precisely how that is. The bathroom, for instance, is a much more unisex space. The bathrooms in the park, as well as several other places I’ve been, are more like two ends of the same room than they are separate areas. Women usually have stalls, or cabines, but the men still use urinals in the bright light of day. The number of men I’ve seen peeing here…
The other interesting and obliquely related thing that has made me laugh: there are condom vending machines all over the place: in the streets, on the metro, everywhere. I mean, accessibility to safe sex is important, but Paris takes it to a whole new level. Anyway, interlude over, back to my day.
Stop number three was the Pantheon, a grand church meant to rival St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, commissioned by King Louis XV and dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of healing, for curing him of a long and dangerous illness. Unfortunately, the building was undergoing restoration, so much of it’s beauty was covered in scaffolding. Due to the scaffolding, all tickets were reduced to student prices for the length of construction. It was my bad luck that an inattentive cashier followed by a language snag meant I ended up paying a bit more.
Regardless, I was excited to go inside, not for the masked beauty so much as the people on the inside. You see, following the foundation of the Republic, someone (it might have been Napoleon?) decided that the Church of Saint Genevieve should become a church of the nation. The building was secularized, renamed, and the state began to bury important national icons in the crypt beneath. It’s a large crpyt, still mostly empty, but does at the moment contain a number of French icons, including many revolutionaries, military heroes, artists, writers, and philosophers such as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. Even Marie Curie is buried there, the first woman to receive the honor.
As much as I enjoyed seeing the tombs of famous writers, I was still far more disappointed by the closure of the Pantheon’s last great attraction. The dome of the Pantheon to this day holds the famed Foucault’s Pendulum, a device that I remember thinking was just about the coolest thing ever in seventh grade science. It was devised by the physicist Leon Foucault, not to be confused with post-structuralist Michel Foucault, to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. The dome where the pendulum is set up, however, was the exact same dome getting restored. So alas, no physics for me.
I finished up at the Pantheon only shortly before closing, which was actually great timing because my last stop for the day didn’t have a closing time. The Bastille Monument, on the site of the old revolutionary prison, was about a half hour walk from the Pantheon, so I geared up for a mini hike and began to wind my way through the, much to my surprise, extremely pleasant streets.
Somehow, my luck that day was on a constant rise, restorations excluded. Without even realizing it, I found myself wandering the streets of the Latin Quarter, the intellectual hub of Paris. It was full of cozy stone buildings and quaint cafes and window after window or antique books. Books seem to be a thing in Paris, stalls line the river selling volumes new and old, but this was something else. Needless to say, I felt very much at home - a feeling only heightened when I finally rounded a corner to come face to face with the Institute of the Arab World.
I had heard about the Institute as a modern architectural landmark, but I hadn’t planned to seek it out. Still, I’m glad I got to see it, as well as the original Orient Express set up out front as an exhibition. It had closed for the day by the time I got there, but seeing the original train was still nice because… trains. And the Orient. And this is me we’re talking about…
Anyway, from the Institute of the Arab World, the Bastille wasn’t too far away. I went, paid my respects, and caught the metro back to my base neighborhood where I realized I hadn’t eaten anything other than bread and cheese for two days, bought some tabouli because I have somehow ended up in a hostel in Little Arabia again, and took it back to my room to eat on that balcony I pointed out in the canal picture. It was quite a lovely day.
After fiddling with my plan a bit on Saturday night, I decided Sunday would be a good day for Versaille. As one of the most popular tourist destinations in or around Paris, it was about what you would expect: big, beautiful, and an impossible hassle.
I missed the first train out by maybe 15 seconds, which meant I had to wait another half hour to ride out to the village with about a million other loud and confused tourists. As soon as we got out of the train station, we were ushered into an endless line for tickets that I realized a few minutes in were actually being sold by a travel company and not the palace at all. They would have gotten me in, I’m sure, but only after several extra hours of waiting and a bunch more money than I needed to pay. So I ditched that line and continued on to the palace myself.
They’d warned me at the tourist office that the wait to get in was two hours, and the line for tickets longer than that. I figured they were exaggerating a bit to try to sell their own tickets, which they refused to admit wouldn’t save me time anyway, but their arguments did give me an idea. On my walk up to the palace, I pulled out my smartphone, the same one that I have begrudgingly come to love, and purchased a ticket online. That meant I only had to wait in the entrance line, which only took one hour, not two, and gave me more time to read up on the Foreign Service.
It was a mad house on the inside (again, expected), but I got through the staterooms without too much problem and only a moderate amount of frustration and annoyance. That was followed by a walk in the gardens, which I kept getting lost, repeatedly and for seemingly longer and longer lengths of time. They were nice gardens though, so I didn’t mind too much, except all the waiting and train missing meant I was a little pressed for time to see Marie Antoinette’s domain on the opposite end of the gardens from the palace.
I did get to her domain eventually, consisting of the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon, and a series of gardens including Marie’s very own farm. I wouldn’t have expected her to have a farm, but have one she did, and it was by far my favorite part. I like nature, so sue me. The little complex even still keeps its own chickens and cows. The funny thing is, I almost didn’t even make it to the farm. The day was growing late, and the grand finale fountain show at the entrance to gardens was due to go on in half an hour. It was easily going to take that to walk comfortably back, even if I didn’t get lost. Something told me to at least go check out the farm though, and while I rushed over there, I certainly didn’t rush exploring. I had kind of decided I liked the farm enough to make it worth missing the fountains, but by the time I was done I felt like challenging myself to try to make it anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
So with my remaining 15 minutes I began to book it back across the gardens, and lo and behold I arrived at the front fountain just as the opening music of the show began. To be honest, I could have missed it, but it was a nice little victory to close out my day. Or at least a victory until the ordeal of getting home.
As you might imagine, if the train was crowded on the way in, everyone leaving at the same time made it even worse on the way out. The train station was mobbed, literally, to the point that the authorities actually closed it down. That sent several hundred people wandering through the streets of Versaille to find another station, because at least the city has three, but it was a major inconvenience either way.
So I hiked another half hour, got to another train station, got in a rapidly growing line for a ticket, and hit another stroke of luck. Probably anticipating another mob like the one at the first station, one of the train workers came out of the office and announced that the train running to Paris was going to be free. They then opened up the turnstiles and let us all pour through, so yay for saving money.
Because I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the free trip, I was actually one of the earlier people on the train and got a comfortable seat for the ride back to the city. In another stroke of luck, because we were leaving from a different station, we also arrived at a different station in Paris; one of the stations where I can reserve my bookings for Eurail. So Sunday night saw me reserving my trains to Malaga, Granada, Cordoba, Sevilla, Madrid and Lisbon. Barcelona was taken care of before hand, and I have hence started charting out trains beyond, but it’s nice to have a couple weeks set. Booking hostels for those is what distracted me from blogging that night, so apologies again, but aren’t you glad I’m a good planner?
Monday I decided to take it easy. In case you hadn’t guessed, I was kind of running myself ragged and I decided I could use a slow, shorter day. I took the metro into the city in the morning to see a couple of the smaller must see sights. Saint-Chapelle Cathedral, a church in the oldest French palace now housing the Court of Justice, has been said to rival Notre Dame. It used to house relics of the Passion of the Christ, including the crown of thorns, though they have since been relocated to Notre Dame Treasury. Learning that made me rethink my decision not to visit said Treasury. I even walked the five minutes from the Court of Justice over to Notre Dame later in the day, but the line was very long, and I had said I wanted a shorter day.
Next to the Court of Justice, which I’ll admit I poked around in a bit because it was open to the public and why not, was La Conciergerie: the only remaining part from the first original palace built however many hundred years ago. It is called La Conciergerie because it was the seat of the power of the King’s Concierge who ruled the court when the French royal family, following the assassination of some king or other, moved out of the city for fear of their lives. Later on, the area was converted into a prison that eventually held Marie Antoinette a few days before her trial and execution, as well as the revolutionary Robespierre before his death from wounds sustained just prior to his arrest.
From La Conciergerie, I followed the river west back past the Louvre and a labor protest to Tuileries Gardens. Like Luxembourg, the park used to be the gardens of a palace, though unlike Luxembourg this palace is no longer standing. Though not quite as spectacular as Luxemborug, it was still a nice park. What it lacked in breathtaking greenery, however, it made up for in overpriced fancy ice cream.
The opposite end of Tuileries Gardens is a square called Concorde, where Marie Antoinette lost her head. The square also marks the beginning of the Champs Elysees, so as my final sightseeing for the day I walked said champs up to the Arc de Triomphe and took the metro back to the hostel. Let me just say, the walk was deceptively long, especially considering I was wearing my Paris shoes again, but I am glad I did it anyway.
This all brings us to today, my last full day in Paris. I wanted it to be a short one as well. I have laundry to do, as well as packing, and I wanted to make sure I had enough time to finish this blog post after I started it last night and got carried away by other things. I headed first for Basilique du Sacre Coeur, a grand basilica commissioned to unify the country after the wars of the Republic. I quite liked it, as I do most churches, as well as the much smaller, much older Saint Pierre de Montmartre church next door. What I adored, however, was the district of Montmartre itself.
Isobel had guessed when we discussed my time in Paris that Montmartre was my type of place. When I first got off the metro I wasn’t sure. It reminded me a bit of New York in that it was dirty and smelled and there was graffiti everywhere. I think it was mostly the street I was on though, because the thirty minute walk I took from Sacre Coeur to the Moulin Rouge wound through streets on which I wouldn’t mind living.
Montmartre is considered the Bohemian part of town, made famous by places like the Moulin Rouge and films like Amelie. It’s the only place I’ve seen in Paris that fits what I see as the French stereotype; narrow cobbled streets lined with little cafes and shops and markets. It’s not boutiques and restaurants, but rather bakeries and florists and butchers and greengrocers, patisseries and soap makers and vendors selling crepes. At one point I turned a corner to see a father and son striking up an up tempo duet on twin guitars that just seemed to complete the whole picture and couldn’t stop myself from grinning like an idiot.
Of course that’s not the only side of Montmartre. I did eventually make it to the Moulin Rouge, which is in a more risque part of the district to be sure. It was worth a stop and a picture though, and it was right around the corner from the cemetery, so you know the old adage about two birds and one stone. I hadn’t been in the cemetery long though before I started to feel the first drops of rain. I’d known it was supposed to rain this afternoon, and I didn’t want to be caught out, so I booked it back to the hostel to finish this post and take care of my tasks for the night.
Before I move on to that however, I do have some news to share. So, the thing that carried me away last night, when I had actually started and fully intended to finish this post, was a travel reservation much bigger than these day to day trains I am taking. Mark your calendars, I have a return date, at least to the states at any rate. It’s much earlier than I expected, I’m far from ready to head home, but as I was writing last night I happened upon a last minute deal for a two week cruise from London to Boston leaving August 31.
I know I was thinking of going to Thailand, but circumstance being what they are the discount was too good to pass up. I’ve been dreaming of a trans-Atlantic cruise for years now, so when the deal popped up with dates that made sense I pounced. Everything is booked and I will be arriving in Boston early on the morning of September 14. Chances are I will head from there up to Toronto, because I like to see my long distance friends when I can. As for what I will do between the end of my rail pass August 5 and the cruise on August 31, I’m still working it out, but have no fear, there are plenty of options on the horizon.
Anyway, my train to Barcelona leaves early tomorrow morning. I hope the internet there will allow for phone calls, but we’ll see when I arrive. Until then, au revoir to and from Paris! It’s been a blast.
The other interesting and obliquely related thing that has made me laugh: there are condom vending machines all over the place: in the streets, on the metro, everywhere. I mean, accessibility to safe sex is important, but Paris takes it to a whole new level. Anyway, interlude over, back to my day.
Stop number three was the Pantheon, a grand church meant to rival St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, commissioned by King Louis XV and dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of healing, for curing him of a long and dangerous illness. Unfortunately, the building was undergoing restoration, so much of it’s beauty was covered in scaffolding. Due to the scaffolding, all tickets were reduced to student prices for the length of construction. It was my bad luck that an inattentive cashier followed by a language snag meant I ended up paying a bit more.
Regardless, I was excited to go inside, not for the masked beauty so much as the people on the inside. You see, following the foundation of the Republic, someone (it might have been Napoleon?) decided that the Church of Saint Genevieve should become a church of the nation. The building was secularized, renamed, and the state began to bury important national icons in the crypt beneath. It’s a large crpyt, still mostly empty, but does at the moment contain a number of French icons, including many revolutionaries, military heroes, artists, writers, and philosophers such as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire. Even Marie Curie is buried there, the first woman to receive the honor.
As much as I enjoyed seeing the tombs of famous writers, I was still far more disappointed by the closure of the Pantheon’s last great attraction. The dome of the Pantheon to this day holds the famed Foucault’s Pendulum, a device that I remember thinking was just about the coolest thing ever in seventh grade science. It was devised by the physicist Leon Foucault, not to be confused with post-structuralist Michel Foucault, to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. The dome where the pendulum is set up, however, was the exact same dome getting restored. So alas, no physics for me.
I finished up at the Pantheon only shortly before closing, which was actually great timing because my last stop for the day didn’t have a closing time. The Bastille Monument, on the site of the old revolutionary prison, was about a half hour walk from the Pantheon, so I geared up for a mini hike and began to wind my way through the, much to my surprise, extremely pleasant streets.
Somehow, my luck that day was on a constant rise, restorations excluded. Without even realizing it, I found myself wandering the streets of the Latin Quarter, the intellectual hub of Paris. It was full of cozy stone buildings and quaint cafes and window after window or antique books. Books seem to be a thing in Paris, stalls line the river selling volumes new and old, but this was something else. Needless to say, I felt very much at home - a feeling only heightened when I finally rounded a corner to come face to face with the Institute of the Arab World.
I had heard about the Institute as a modern architectural landmark, but I hadn’t planned to seek it out. Still, I’m glad I got to see it, as well as the original Orient Express set up out front as an exhibition. It had closed for the day by the time I got there, but seeing the original train was still nice because… trains. And the Orient. And this is me we’re talking about…
Anyway, from the Institute of the Arab World, the Bastille wasn’t too far away. I went, paid my respects, and caught the metro back to my base neighborhood where I realized I hadn’t eaten anything other than bread and cheese for two days, bought some tabouli because I have somehow ended up in a hostel in Little Arabia again, and took it back to my room to eat on that balcony I pointed out in the canal picture. It was quite a lovely day.
After fiddling with my plan a bit on Saturday night, I decided Sunday would be a good day for Versaille. As one of the most popular tourist destinations in or around Paris, it was about what you would expect: big, beautiful, and an impossible hassle.
I missed the first train out by maybe 15 seconds, which meant I had to wait another half hour to ride out to the village with about a million other loud and confused tourists. As soon as we got out of the train station, we were ushered into an endless line for tickets that I realized a few minutes in were actually being sold by a travel company and not the palace at all. They would have gotten me in, I’m sure, but only after several extra hours of waiting and a bunch more money than I needed to pay. So I ditched that line and continued on to the palace myself.
They’d warned me at the tourist office that the wait to get in was two hours, and the line for tickets longer than that. I figured they were exaggerating a bit to try to sell their own tickets, which they refused to admit wouldn’t save me time anyway, but their arguments did give me an idea. On my walk up to the palace, I pulled out my smartphone, the same one that I have begrudgingly come to love, and purchased a ticket online. That meant I only had to wait in the entrance line, which only took one hour, not two, and gave me more time to read up on the Foreign Service.
It was a mad house on the inside (again, expected), but I got through the staterooms without too much problem and only a moderate amount of frustration and annoyance. That was followed by a walk in the gardens, which I kept getting lost, repeatedly and for seemingly longer and longer lengths of time. They were nice gardens though, so I didn’t mind too much, except all the waiting and train missing meant I was a little pressed for time to see Marie Antoinette’s domain on the opposite end of the gardens from the palace.
I did get to her domain eventually, consisting of the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon, and a series of gardens including Marie’s very own farm. I wouldn’t have expected her to have a farm, but have one she did, and it was by far my favorite part. I like nature, so sue me. The little complex even still keeps its own chickens and cows. The funny thing is, I almost didn’t even make it to the farm. The day was growing late, and the grand finale fountain show at the entrance to gardens was due to go on in half an hour. It was easily going to take that to walk comfortably back, even if I didn’t get lost. Something told me to at least go check out the farm though, and while I rushed over there, I certainly didn’t rush exploring. I had kind of decided I liked the farm enough to make it worth missing the fountains, but by the time I was done I felt like challenging myself to try to make it anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
So with my remaining 15 minutes I began to book it back across the gardens, and lo and behold I arrived at the front fountain just as the opening music of the show began. To be honest, I could have missed it, but it was a nice little victory to close out my day. Or at least a victory until the ordeal of getting home.
As you might imagine, if the train was crowded on the way in, everyone leaving at the same time made it even worse on the way out. The train station was mobbed, literally, to the point that the authorities actually closed it down. That sent several hundred people wandering through the streets of Versaille to find another station, because at least the city has three, but it was a major inconvenience either way.
So I hiked another half hour, got to another train station, got in a rapidly growing line for a ticket, and hit another stroke of luck. Probably anticipating another mob like the one at the first station, one of the train workers came out of the office and announced that the train running to Paris was going to be free. They then opened up the turnstiles and let us all pour through, so yay for saving money.
Because I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the free trip, I was actually one of the earlier people on the train and got a comfortable seat for the ride back to the city. In another stroke of luck, because we were leaving from a different station, we also arrived at a different station in Paris; one of the stations where I can reserve my bookings for Eurail. So Sunday night saw me reserving my trains to Malaga, Granada, Cordoba, Sevilla, Madrid and Lisbon. Barcelona was taken care of before hand, and I have hence started charting out trains beyond, but it’s nice to have a couple weeks set. Booking hostels for those is what distracted me from blogging that night, so apologies again, but aren’t you glad I’m a good planner?
Monday I decided to take it easy. In case you hadn’t guessed, I was kind of running myself ragged and I decided I could use a slow, shorter day. I took the metro into the city in the morning to see a couple of the smaller must see sights. Saint-Chapelle Cathedral, a church in the oldest French palace now housing the Court of Justice, has been said to rival Notre Dame. It used to house relics of the Passion of the Christ, including the crown of thorns, though they have since been relocated to Notre Dame Treasury. Learning that made me rethink my decision not to visit said Treasury. I even walked the five minutes from the Court of Justice over to Notre Dame later in the day, but the line was very long, and I had said I wanted a shorter day.
Next to the Court of Justice, which I’ll admit I poked around in a bit because it was open to the public and why not, was La Conciergerie: the only remaining part from the first original palace built however many hundred years ago. It is called La Conciergerie because it was the seat of the power of the King’s Concierge who ruled the court when the French royal family, following the assassination of some king or other, moved out of the city for fear of their lives. Later on, the area was converted into a prison that eventually held Marie Antoinette a few days before her trial and execution, as well as the revolutionary Robespierre before his death from wounds sustained just prior to his arrest.
From La Conciergerie, I followed the river west back past the Louvre and a labor protest to Tuileries Gardens. Like Luxembourg, the park used to be the gardens of a palace, though unlike Luxembourg this palace is no longer standing. Though not quite as spectacular as Luxemborug, it was still a nice park. What it lacked in breathtaking greenery, however, it made up for in overpriced fancy ice cream.
The opposite end of Tuileries Gardens is a square called Concorde, where Marie Antoinette lost her head. The square also marks the beginning of the Champs Elysees, so as my final sightseeing for the day I walked said champs up to the Arc de Triomphe and took the metro back to the hostel. Let me just say, the walk was deceptively long, especially considering I was wearing my Paris shoes again, but I am glad I did it anyway.
This all brings us to today, my last full day in Paris. I wanted it to be a short one as well. I have laundry to do, as well as packing, and I wanted to make sure I had enough time to finish this blog post after I started it last night and got carried away by other things. I headed first for Basilique du Sacre Coeur, a grand basilica commissioned to unify the country after the wars of the Republic. I quite liked it, as I do most churches, as well as the much smaller, much older Saint Pierre de Montmartre church next door. What I adored, however, was the district of Montmartre itself.
Isobel had guessed when we discussed my time in Paris that Montmartre was my type of place. When I first got off the metro I wasn’t sure. It reminded me a bit of New York in that it was dirty and smelled and there was graffiti everywhere. I think it was mostly the street I was on though, because the thirty minute walk I took from Sacre Coeur to the Moulin Rouge wound through streets on which I wouldn’t mind living.
Montmartre is considered the Bohemian part of town, made famous by places like the Moulin Rouge and films like Amelie. It’s the only place I’ve seen in Paris that fits what I see as the French stereotype; narrow cobbled streets lined with little cafes and shops and markets. It’s not boutiques and restaurants, but rather bakeries and florists and butchers and greengrocers, patisseries and soap makers and vendors selling crepes. At one point I turned a corner to see a father and son striking up an up tempo duet on twin guitars that just seemed to complete the whole picture and couldn’t stop myself from grinning like an idiot.
Of course that’s not the only side of Montmartre. I did eventually make it to the Moulin Rouge, which is in a more risque part of the district to be sure. It was worth a stop and a picture though, and it was right around the corner from the cemetery, so you know the old adage about two birds and one stone. I hadn’t been in the cemetery long though before I started to feel the first drops of rain. I’d known it was supposed to rain this afternoon, and I didn’t want to be caught out, so I booked it back to the hostel to finish this post and take care of my tasks for the night.
Before I move on to that however, I do have some news to share. So, the thing that carried me away last night, when I had actually started and fully intended to finish this post, was a travel reservation much bigger than these day to day trains I am taking. Mark your calendars, I have a return date, at least to the states at any rate. It’s much earlier than I expected, I’m far from ready to head home, but as I was writing last night I happened upon a last minute deal for a two week cruise from London to Boston leaving August 31.
I know I was thinking of going to Thailand, but circumstance being what they are the discount was too good to pass up. I’ve been dreaming of a trans-Atlantic cruise for years now, so when the deal popped up with dates that made sense I pounced. Everything is booked and I will be arriving in Boston early on the morning of September 14. Chances are I will head from there up to Toronto, because I like to see my long distance friends when I can. As for what I will do between the end of my rail pass August 5 and the cruise on August 31, I’m still working it out, but have no fear, there are plenty of options on the horizon.
Anyway, my train to Barcelona leaves early tomorrow morning. I hope the internet there will allow for phone calls, but we’ll see when I arrive. Until then, au revoir to and from Paris! It’s been a blast.
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