{"id":4098,"date":"2015-09-06T09:04:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-06T08:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=4098"},"modified":"2026-05-21T08:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T07:40:15","slug":"france-again-but-not-with-our-eileen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2015\/09\/06\/france-again-but-not-with-our-eileen\/","title":{"rendered":"France Again But Not With Our Eileen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Il a \u00e9t\u00e9 bon, \u00e0 tr\u00e8s bon.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"On
On the Boulevard de Clichy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was 10:30am when we stepped out of Andy and Carole\u2019s house and dragged our wheelie bags down to Hertford North Station to catch the train to London\u2019s Kings Cross station.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The departure lounge was packed with fellow travellers and tons of bags, all waiting to be whisked to Europe on the Eurostar trains.\u00a0 Our train choofed out of the station at 13:31pm and then shot through London and out across the countryside to \u2018the tunnel\u2019.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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!!!\u00a0 I think my arms may now be longer than before\u2026..<\/p>\n

\"Inside
Inside the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019 Orsay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

With keys in our hands, we found our way to Julia and Kevin\u2019s 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.\u00a0 We\u2019re 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 From there, we promenaded along the Left Bank as far as the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019 Orsay; what a fabulous museum.\u00a0 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\u2019t disappointed.\u00a0 As well as the extensive collection of paintings and sculptures the old renovated train station is a sight to behold.\u00a0 The light coming through the arched glass roof is perfect for an art gallery and the whole building feels delightful.\u00a0 Realising we were only half way round after two hours of wandering, we splashed out on a light lunch in the airy caf\u00e9 set right behind one of the enormous clocks near the top of the building.\u00a0 I love a crisp white tablecloth and I\u2019m not sure why but I\u2019m always quietly thrilled by cutlery that is presented all tucked up in a little package.<\/p>\n

\"Inside
Inside the clock looking towards Montmartre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The whole experience felt quite creative.\u00a0 We followed lunch with another two and a half hours spent playing art critic, or \u201cI know what I like and I wouldn\u2019t hang that on my wall\u201d and finally we felt it was time to step outside into the sunshine.\u00a0 We crossed the Pont Rue Royal and promenaded along the rive gauche of the Seine beside the enormous Louvre Museum.\u00a0 We visited the Louvre back in 1987, and we\u2019d 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.\u00a0 The view was just as we remembered it, but sadly the iron railings on the bridge have been completely boarded up, so we couldn\u2019t re-enact the lovely photo we took back then.\u00a0 There seems to be a rather stupid trend in Europe of attaching padlocks to anything considered a \u2018romantic spot\u2019 in so many towns and cities.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen it in Verona, Venice and Salzburg to name just a few, and have since heard that it was a craze started on \u201cSex And The City\u201d. 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.\u00a0 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 \u2018lovelocks\u2019 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.\u00a0 It has certainly spoilt a beautiful spot in Paris and we can only hope that the craze dies off soon.<\/p>\n

\"Street
Street art or graffiti?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

And then we had a swanky moment.\u00a0 I suddenly noticed that the lady standing beside us was the Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Instead we just followed them over the bridge like a couple of stalkers\u2026\u2026.are we sad old people?\u00a0 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<\/sup> Arrondissment to the Boulevard St Germain<\/p>\n

\"Laura
Laura sort of stalking Hilary Swank (in the orange skirt) across the Pont des Arts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 We staggered uphill through narrow streets and then up the steps to the beautiful Basilique du Sacr\u00e9-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 Sacr\u00e9-Couer.\u00a0 There were many artists painting and \/ or selling their pictures, so I had a good nose around but didn\u2019t find anything that cried out \u201cbuy me\u201d. \u00a0The 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 Op\u00e9ra and in to the Jardin des Tuilleries.<\/p>\n

\"Artists
Artists in Montmartre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\".....and
…..and more artists in Montmartre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Wrong
Wrong way, Rodney. We’re now heading downhill….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Then we crossed the bridge and walked all the way back through the 7th<\/sup> Arrondissement to Kevin and Julia\u2019s apartment.\u00a0 By then our legs were leaden and my hips felt like they would never move again.\u00a0\u00a0 But after a quick shower and one-hour of sitting, we set off with Julia to a local creperie for a yummy evening meal.\u00a0 On the walk back, we stood and watched the Eiffel Tower being lit up by 20,000 light bulbs.\u00a0 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\u2019s magical.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Eiffel Tower from the Place de la Concorde<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 A wander around the base of the Eiffel Tower gazing upwards in awe started our legwork for the day.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We clipped shut the backpack, kept our hands in our pockets and we kept wandering along Parisian roads in a vaguely north-westerly direction.<\/p>\n

\"Laura
Laura and the classic view of the Tour Eiffel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not too further on, I was absolutely busting for a pee.\u00a0 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\u2019t seem to care for providing these necessities for the public.\u00a0 We spotted a metro station, but here\u2019s a tip: they don\u2019t have loos and that makes the urgency seem even more impelling. \u00a0Ah ha, a caf\u00e9 \/ restaurant was setting up for lunch and seemed to be serving coffees to a few customers.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Made it!\u00a0 But I have one irritation about Europe that niggles; the advice when needing a pee is always, go to a caf\u00e9, buy a drink and use their loo.\u00a0 But if I have a drink after using their loo, I\u2019m going to need to find another loo in an hour\u2019s time, so then I\u2019ll have to buy another drink to be able to use their loo\u2026.etc, etc., etc.\u00a0 When you\u2019re out and about wandering the streets of cities and towns for eight hours or more in a day, all the caf\u00e9 and toilet hunting can get quite exasperating and verging on expensive.\u00a0 And I mean expensive!\u00a0 This caf\u00e9 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.\u00a0 One small hot chocolate, one standard sized caf\u00e9-au-lait and a much appreciated pee actually cost us\u2026\u2026wait for it\u2026….\u20ac16.20; that\u2019s roughly \u00a312 or $27Au for two drinks and a pee (or two) !!!!!\u00a0 We weren\u2019t even on the Champs Elysee, we were in some small road in some unknown suburb of Paris.\u00a0 Rodney has labelled the experience as my \u2018most expensive pee in the world\u2019\u2026\u2026..so far in my life.\u00a0 When clearing the table, the waiter tried to screw up the receipt and when I grabbed it he seemed a little surprised.\u00a0 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!\u00a0 The experience has given us a lot to laugh about and talk about and may take us a little time to recover from.<\/p>\n

\".....and
…..and another classic view of the Eiffel Tower from the Place du Trocadero<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

When we finally reached the Bois de Bologne, we weren\u2019t sure what it was, or what we were even looking for.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why we didn\u2019t really research it properly, but it seemed somewhere nice that we hadn\u2019t been to before.\u00a0 It is actually a huge forested area that needs to be driven round, not walked; yet again, where was Eileen when we needed her?\u00a0 There was even a campsite on the far side, but we never managed to walk that far.\u00a0 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\u2019s lakes and gardens and masses of impregnable woodland.\u00a0 It\u2019s two and a half times the size of Central Park in New York!\u00a0 We didn\u2019t see any of this, only the endless woods and the trees.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Add that to our Gehry list; this year we\u2019ve already viewed his fabulous new \u2018crumpled\u2019 building in Sydney and his \u2018fish\u2019 building in Barcelona; what next? \u00a0Sadly, 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.\u00a0 It would have been lovely to see it with blue skies and sunshine sparkling on its panels of glass.\u00a0 Never mind, it was still an interesting jumble of glass panes suspended over water and probably a builder’s nightmare.\u00a0 \u201cNow this bit goes where, and it\u2019s attached how?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The
Some of the shiny Fondation Louis Vuitton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0 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\u2019re aiming for.\u00a0 After another photography session we dived back down the tunnel and resurfaced out on the Champs Elysees.\u00a0 We had intended to walk back to Julia and Kevin\u2019s apartment, but we were both a bit weary, so the Metro seemed like a good idea at the time.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"Looking
Looking up inside the Arc de Triomphe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Il a \u00e9t\u00e9 bon, \u00e0 tr\u00e8s bon.   It was 10:30am when we stepped out of Andy and Carole\u2019s house and dragged our wheelie bags down to Hertford North Station to catch the train to London\u2019s Kings Cross station.\u00a0 The bags were then dragged across the road to St Pancras station where we flashed our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-france-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8271,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4098\/revisions\/8271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}