Il a été bon, à très bon.
It was 10:30am when we stepped out of Andy and Carole’s house and dragged our wheelie bags down to Hertford North Station to catch the train to London’s Kings Cross station. The bags were then dragged across the road to St Pancras station where we flashed our passports to the British and then to the French immigration officials and watched our luggage being scanned. The departure lounge was packed with fellow travellers and tons of bags, all waiting to be whisked to Europe on the Eurostar trains. Our train choofed out of the station at 13:31pm and then shot through London and out across the countryside to ‘the tunnel’. We seemed to be in the dark Channel Tunnel for quite a long time, but nowhere near as long as it took to cross the French pastures to Paris. We dragged our bags up and down numerous flights of stairs, on and off two metro trains and finally popped out into sunshine at La Tour Maubourg next to the Hotel des Invalides. It seemed an appropriately named building as my arms ached from manhandling my bags all day; I was desperately missing Eileen the Campervan; she carries everything for us, including the kitchen sink!!! I think my arms may now be longer than before…..
With keys in our hands, we found our way to Julia and Kevin’s apartment on the Avenue de Segur in the 7th Arrondissement, which is in a fabulous position between the Eiffel Tower, the Seine and the St Germain area of Paris. We’re both rather jealous of them living there for a couple of years and being able to really immerse themselves in everything that Paris has to offer, and we were really grateful to be able to use the apartment for our short break. On Wednesday morning we woke up excited about the prospect of being in Paris, so we set off early-ish to walk down to the Seine at the very fancy Pont Alexandre. From there, we promenaded along the Left Bank as far as the Musée d’ Orsay; what a fabulous museum. This was one of only a couple of spots that Rodney and I failed to visit when we were in Paris in 1987, so it was now top of our list of places to see in 2015 and we weren’t disappointed. As well as the extensive collection of paintings and sculptures the old renovated train station is a sight to behold. The light coming through the arched glass roof is perfect for an art gallery and the whole building feels delightful. Realising we were only half way round after two hours of wandering, we splashed out on a light lunch in the airy café set right behind one of the enormous clocks near the top of the building. I love a crisp white tablecloth and I’m not sure why but I’m always quietly thrilled by cutlery that is presented all tucked up in a little package.
The whole experience felt quite creative. We followed lunch with another two and a half hours spent playing art critic, or “I know what I like and I wouldn’t hang that on my wall” and finally we felt it was time to step outside into the sunshine. We crossed the Pont Rue Royal and promenaded along the rive gauche of the Seine beside the enormous Louvre Museum. We visited the Louvre back in 1987, and we’d already filled our eyes full of art, so we turned our gaze to the river and strolled as far as the pedestrian Pont des Arts for a classic view of the Notre Dame. The view was just as we remembered it, but sadly the iron railings on the bridge have been completely boarded up, so we couldn’t re-enact the lovely photo we took back then. There seems to be a rather stupid trend in Europe of attaching padlocks to anything considered a ‘romantic spot’ in so many towns and cities. We’ve seen it in Verona, Venice and Salzburg to name just a few, and have since heard that it was a craze started on “Sex And The City”. But to see hundreds and thousands of the things locked onto railings anywhere and everywhere is just plain ugly and as it turns out, dangerous. The railings along the edge of the embankment at both ends of the Pont des Arts bridge are so heavily weighted down with tonnes of ‘lovelocks’ and fearing the extra weight on the railings over the river could not be held, the council have had to board up both sides of the stylish railings across the Seine. It has certainly spoilt a beautiful spot in Paris and we can only hope that the craze dies off soon.
And then we had a swanky moment. I suddenly noticed that the lady standing beside us was the Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank. She was deep in conversation with a nice-looking man, so it seemed rude to butt in and start discussing the changeable Parisian weather with her. Instead we just followed them over the bridge like a couple of stalkers…….are we sad old people? On the Quai des Grands au Gustins, we un-stalked Hilary and ambled down to the Boulevard St Michel to hum a song and browse the bookshops through the 6th Arrondissment to the Boulevard St Germain
On Thursday, after a rather lazy morning, waiting for Julia to arrive from Canada (we had her keys), we set off again across Paris on the Metro to Anvers in the lovely district of Montmartre. We staggered uphill through narrow streets and then up the steps to the beautiful Basilique du Sacré-Couer. We did actually take a break between the street and staggering up the steps, to eat an essential stuffed baguette and guzzle cold drinks. Then we arrived at the Sacré-Couer. There were many artists painting and / or selling their pictures, so I had a good nose around but didn’t find anything that cried out “buy me”. The streets of Montmartre seem to wriggle about randomly, so we just followed our noses and gradually worked our way back down the hill to Pigalle, the Moulin Rouge, Place de la Opéra and in to the Jardin des Tuilleries.
A short break sitting by one of the ponds, put a bit more fuel in our legs and we set off to the Place de la Concorde to view the enormous Obelisque. Then we crossed the bridge and walked all the way back through the 7th Arrondissement to Kevin and Julia’s apartment. By then our legs were leaden and my hips felt like they would never move again. But after a quick shower and one-hour of sitting, we set off with Julia to a local creperie for a yummy evening meal. On the walk back, we stood and watched the Eiffel Tower being lit up by 20,000 light bulbs. It happens on the hour every hour from sunset to 1am, it lasts for 5 minutes and is definitely worth standing in the cold to watch; it’s magical.
The next morning Julia and I sent Rodney out for croissants from a local boulangerie (my legs still ached), then we hit the road hard again on Friday. A wander around the base of the Eiffel Tower gazing upwards in awe started our legwork for the day. We passed by a group of female gypsies being ordered by the police to empty the contents of all their pockets on to the ground. And I have to say, they had a lot of pockets, plus there seemed to be a lot of stuff coming out of them. Hmmm. We clipped shut the backpack, kept our hands in our pockets and we kept wandering along Parisian roads in a vaguely north-westerly direction.
Not too further on, I was absolutely busting for a pee. It was one of those times when you just know you have got to find a toilet and soon, but Paris, in fact all of France, really doesn’t seem to care for providing these necessities for the public. We spotted a metro station, but here’s a tip: they don’t have loos and that makes the urgency seem even more impelling. Ah ha, a café / restaurant was setting up for lunch and seemed to be serving coffees to a few customers. There was no chance of diving in to use the loo and not have a drink, so Rodney sat at a table outside while I accosted a waiter and asked for very urgent directions to la toilette. Made it! But I have one irritation about Europe that niggles; the advice when needing a pee is always, go to a café, buy a drink and use their loo. But if I have a drink after using their loo, I’m going to need to find another loo in an hour’s time, so then I’ll have to buy another drink to be able to use their loo….etc, etc., etc. When you’re out and about wandering the streets of cities and towns for eight hours or more in a day, all the café and toilet hunting can get quite exasperating and verging on expensive. And I mean expensive! This café we had just found did look rather nice and the waiters were floating white tablecloths down on to the tables for lunch, so I guessed our drinks might be a tad on the pricy side. One small hot chocolate, one standard sized café-au-lait and a much appreciated pee actually cost us……wait for it…….€16.20; that’s roughly £12 or $27Au for two drinks and a pee (or two) !!!!! We weren’t even on the Champs Elysee, we were in some small road in some unknown suburb of Paris. Rodney has labelled the experience as my ‘most expensive pee in the world’……..so far in my life. When clearing the table, the waiter tried to screw up the receipt and when I grabbed it he seemed a little surprised. I smiled sweetly and said it was a souvenir; I am treasuring the expensive little scrap of paper as proof of how affluent we must be! The experience has given us a lot to laugh about and talk about and may take us a little time to recover from.
When we finally reached the Bois de Bologne, we weren’t sure what it was, or what we were even looking for. I’m not sure why we didn’t really research it properly, but it seemed somewhere nice that we hadn’t been to before. It is actually a huge forested area that needs to be driven round, not walked; yet again, where was Eileen when we needed her? There was even a campsite on the far side, but we never managed to walk that far. There are 845 hectares containing two horse racing tracks, a zoo, an amusement park and even the Roland Garros Tennis Stadium is in there, plus there’s lakes and gardens and masses of impregnable woodland. It’s two and a half times the size of Central Park in New York! We didn’t see any of this, only the endless woods and the trees. Instead, we padded along the side of a roadway until we came across the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which is a newly opened art gallery inside a building designed by Frank Gehry. Add that to our Gehry list; this year we’ve already viewed his fabulous new ‘crumpled’ building in Sydney and his ‘fish’ building in Barcelona; what next? Sadly, as we arrived at the striking, shiny building the sky tried to rain on us, so all that was reflected in the multi-faceted sides were grey clouds and wet streaks. It would have been lovely to see it with blue skies and sunshine sparkling on its panels of glass. Never mind, it was still an interesting jumble of glass panes suspended over water and probably a builder’s nightmare. “Now this bit goes where, and it’s attached how?”
By now we were at the northern point of the Bois de Bologne and about as far out of Paris as we wanted to go, so we turned back east and ambled along the Avenue de la Grand-Armee to the Arc de Triomphe. It seems like a rather child-like adventure to go down a tunnel and pop out in the middle of a roundabout surrounded by vehicles struggling to join in to the stream of traffic and then actually managing to leave on the exit they’re aiming for. After another photography session we dived back down the tunnel and resurfaced out on the Champs Elysees. We had intended to walk back to Julia and Kevin’s apartment, but we were both a bit weary, so the Metro seemed like a good idea at the time. It also gave us a bit of time to put our feet up at the apartment, chat to Kevin, who had just flown in from America, and have a shower before a noisy evening out with our future fellow seven plaisanciers. That evening eleven of us sat down to a tasty meal at La Boussole and the next morning, nine of us met up at Paris Bercy train station to catch the train to Briare.
