Our stay in France will be short, as we only have time to see Paris before we fly away to Portugal.
Updated: August 25, 2003
Bonjour from Paris! Ahh - the sights and smells of the French. Everywhere we go our senses are overwhelmed with great sights and powerful smells. From the aroma of fresh bread in the patisserie down the road (yummmmm) to the aging stench of the underground trains. The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower to the dark creepy skulls in the catacombs.
looking up from under le Tour Eiffel
We are having lots of fun here. It is hot, but not as hot as it was during the first few days in London.
Our first day we arrived at the hotel and relaxed. There is no air conditioning, but we can open the windows up wide and a nice breeze cools it off pretty quickly. The next morning, we slept late and because we forgot to change our clocks ahead, the maid was upset because it was almost noon before we let her clean the room. Ooops.
Today is actually our fourth and last day here. While here, we visited the Louvre (where we saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and many other great works of art), the Catacombs (tunnels and tunnels of skulls and other neatly arranged bones) and the Pantheon (Foucault’s Pendulum and a crypt with famous French people such as Marie Curie and her husband, Victor Hugo, etc.)
the catacombs under the city have walls and walls of bones - this one has a heart shaped out of skulls
Also on our list of things we did was to climb the Eiffel Tower, climb the towers at Notre Dame (lots of gargoyles and chimera) and climb Montmartre to see the bastille of Sacre Coeur (oops I probably spelled that wrong!). While doing all of this, we seem to have gotten a handle on the underground train system here. It seems everywhere we go we are going up or down stairs and down tunnels that go on forever.
Last night we were curious about the Moulin Rouge, so we went there. It is quite expensive and there was a sign posted “formal attire required”. Since we are on a budget and only have travelling clothes, we decided against going in. So we walked up and down the street to see the area. It seemed that the surrounding area is all bars with “exotic” dancers and peep shows mixed in with interesting little boutiques selling things I dare not mention here. (XXX!!!)
Anyways, tomorrow we are off to Lisbon and Richard is currently trying to find us somewhere to stay. Sorry I couldn’t put up any recent pictures.
PS. When walking down the streets of Paris, here’s a tip - stay away from the area around the trees on the sidewalks. I don’t think they have Pooper-Scoopers here.
Richard’s take: So we finally entered the cosmopolitan meca of Paris, height of haute couture and fashion, and our introduction to it was a man peeing on a wall….and not in an artistic way, he was just hosing it down. I could have understood if it was an old man, but it wasn’t. Once again, the lesson learned was don’t make people pay to use the bathrooms. As Diana mentioned, Paris is a smorgasboard for the senses, fresh bread in the morning which transforms into day old urine by the evening. As for the sights, braless women everywhere, my neck hurts from the whiplash, and my arm from Diana hitting me, even though I profess my innoncence in that I was simply looking for an interent cafe.
The food, albeit better than English, is not as good as I was hoping. I assume this is because we are not eating at the expensive restaurants seeing as a cheap place still runs you about $50 CAD for a basic meal for two, whereas a nice place is $100 a person. At the cafes, you soon learn to only drink wine or beer which is cheap compared to the bottled water, $8CAD for a bottle….and the French wonder why people detest them.
The Louvre is absolutely huge, the whole time I was pretty much lost, but we mananged to see the 2 main attractions: the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. I was pretty sure before I left that I did not have an artistic bone in my body, and seeing these confirmed it. As far as I could tell the Mona Lisa was one of those paint by numbers kits you did as a kid….I’ll stick to my stack of atristic Playboys instead. The sculptures are amazing though, I can’t figure out how they cranked out so many of these with the tools they had back then. Give me a Dremel and Play-doh, and I still would fail Grade 1 art.
Much like England it is amazing at how old things are, it’s kind of funny that we classify houses built in the 1920’s and 30’s as “heritage houses” while here, if its not over 300 years old, who cares. Looked at some condo prices out of curiosity, some as London, a place of 400 sq ft runs you about $600,000 euro if it is in a decent area. Yikes, doesn’t appear the salaries are anything great, so I am not sure who buys these, but I hear you can get a 100 year mortgage….what a great inheritance to leave you kids….a house with only 30 years left on the mortgage.
Well Diana has told you about the sights, so nothing more to say on that…off to Portugal and relaxation….
June 16th, 2010 at 4:02 am
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