Île de France
20 arrondissements, 6 museums, 2 art galleries, 2 churches, 2 national monuments, 1 palace and 1 Parc de la Villette..........
Thursday 15th October 2009
We headed off on our Paris mini-break this afternoon. Our bus left London Victoria at 1:30 and we were due into Paris about 9:30 (Paris time). We had an uneventful trip including an extremely smooth ferry trip across the channel. Not long after arriving in Paris we were in beautiful Montmartre meeting one of our hosts Martial (thats the best thing about catching a bus or train instead of flying- you're in town in a few minutes). Martial led us back to the cutest little Parisian flat you could ever imagine. It was tiny but cosy and well decorated. Before long Cecile was home as well and we were treated to fabulous French hospitality, eating delicious food and drinking some seriously good red wine.
Friday 16th
Today we hit the museums hard. We headed out early and made our way the the most famous of them all Musee du Louvre.
Le Louvre!
Yes it is as cold as it looks....
We made our way to see the obligatory Mona Lisa, then onto the Venus de Milo. Eventually we managed to find Egyptian antiquities and marvel over the Large Sphinx (c. 2000 BCE). Frankly the Egyptian antiquities section is a little embarrassing, having been to the Cairo Museum its a little sad just how much has been spirited away from the original owners. They have so many ornately decorated sarcophagi that they have them standing on end clustered together side by side just to fit them all in! After that we headed for the Rubens room (more like a wing) and marvelled over more French and northern European masters.
After a brisk walk along the left bank of the Seine we reached the beautiful Musee D'Orsay, which is housed in an ornate old train station Gare D'Orsay (which just happened to be the first electrified urban rail terminus). Musee D'Orsay has the worlds largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces so of course I was in heaven, strolling past works by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh like I get to see them everyday! Nick met and fell in love with a polar bear sculpture (life size) and it was a struggle getting him past the gift shop and the smaller but no less impressive copies for sale there. We were in desperate need of lunch by now so we headed into the Latin quarter and found a little French bistro to huddle into. It was cramped, crowded but full of character and the food was delicious (especially the French Onion soup).
The beautiful Musee D'Orsay
L'institute du monde Arabe
After lunch we made our way down the river to l'institute du monde Arabe designed by the super cool Jean Nouvel. This building is seriously photogenic and we spent more time exploring the building taking photos than actually looking at the exhibits in the 5th floor museum.
The main wall looks like an Islamic pierced screen, but its actually made up of metallic diaphrams that operate like a camera lenses opening and closing (supposedly) to regulate the amount of light that enters the building. From the outside the iris changes are delicate, subtle differences to the pattern, but from the inside the building the change is dramatic as the light streams in. Reflections, refractions and patterns are everywhere... Jean is a genius. Mind you, more than a couple seemed broken...
Next we wondered over to Notre Dame de Paris (our lady of Paris) and took in those famous flying buttresses.
model of the 'Dame
Out the front we saw a local hospital patient who'd escaped for a ciggie, complete with hospital gown and drip still attached.
We also checked out a little museum under the ground in front of Notre Dame. There were some old 'roman times' cellars under there and some cool stuff about Paris from long ago...
We'd made plans with our lovely hosts to meet up at the Chocolate fair, so we made our way there and checked out the delicious delicacies on offer. Several hundred samples later we made our way back to Montmartre to have some dinner. Martial and Cecile took us to a lovely little crêperie with only room for about 10 patrons (it was all very Global Village). After dinner we all wondered up to la butte de Montmartre took in the view over all of Paris before walking back to their apartment. I think I was asleep within a few seconds of getting into bed.
Us with Cecile.
Saturday 17th
Today was dedicated Versailles day and we were on the C line train heading to Chateau Versailles by 9 am. There just happened to be a modern art exhibition on as well so we saw some interesting installations and sculptures as well as the decadent excesses of the Chateau.
purple balls.. I thought this would've been cooler with clear sticks and string so you only see the balls... but I'm sure theres a reason why they weren't.
Wondering around the castle was interesting but the actual layout of the building was boring, just one room after another all joined into the next.
The gardens were the really spectacular thing, the scale was huge and the massive man made rectangular pools and symmetrical lines were beautiful.
We made our way over to Marie Antoinette's 'cottage' and the adjoining gardens and follies (her purpose built fake french village).
In the gardens...
A panorama of Marie Antoinettes village.
Dark clouds were forming so we decided to trek back through the gardens to the Chateau and onto the train station. By now we were rather exhausted, it was 4pm and we'd arrived at 10am.
We drifted off to sleep on the train and missed our stop but eventually we made our way to Centre Pompidou. For the last two days we'd been cramming in as much as possible on our Paris Card, as it was only valid for two days and we wanted to get our money's worth... we certainly had if not just for avoiding the lines! At every attraction I think we saved at least 30 mins by going through the express pre-paid lines. No more so than at the Centre Pompidou. The lines went back across the square and that was just to buy the ticket, there were more internal lines to have your ticket checked and to get into the gift shop! There was even a line up to buy a yearly pass! How many of those would you think they sold in a day? Apparently more than a few! Pompidou had a great exhibit on of women in modern art 'Elles' which had everything from installation works to architects (Zaha) to good old oil on canvas. After that exhibit the permanent works looked a bit tired really!
The Centre Pompidou...
By this time we were at a new level of exhaustion! We headed back towards Montmatre and stopped for dinner at a little Turkish place, where our entertainment was one seriously stoned junkie who almost fell down into the open cellar, spilled half his dinner down the front of him and then didn't have enough money to pay for his food.
Sunday 18th
Today we headed to Paris' theatre district and checked out c3 Paris (our church- French style)! Some of the c3 songs actually sound better in French... the Pastor was an American and his wife , French, translated for those who didn't speak English. It was amazing, I thought it would be really distracting having the translator there but it wasn't at all and the message was really good.
Afterwards we wondered down the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower, enjoying the morning air and the lack of tourists. It wasn't until we actually reached the tower that we realised where all the tourists were! The lines to go anywhere up the tower were frighteningly long so we wondered around amusing ourselves by taking photos and people watching.
yes, we were really here...
Our feet seemed permanently damaged from all our walking around so we caught the metro over to the other big 'monument' Arc de Triomph. We got there just a tad too late, they had closed the access to the top early due to some kind of veterans celebration but we had plenty of time to look around the actual arc before they cordoned that off too.
The Arc & Nick
Next we did the cheap tourists option and hung out on Avenue des Champs-Élysées - at Macca's!
A must to any tourist trip to Paris is watching the sun set over all of Paris from la butte de Montmartre, preferably on the steps of the Sacre Coeur, if you can get a seat!! So we got the metro to Abbesses and walked up the hill from there. I enjoy the villagey feel of he Montmartre area, even if around the Sacre Coeur it is a little contrived.
The view over Paris
We bought postcards, souvenirs and desserts from the patisserie to enjoy with our hosts, before heading up to stake out our spot to enjoy the sunset.
Once the sun set we made our way down to Martial and Cecile's getting lost on the way, then finding our way again thanks to a friendly florist where I bought some flowers for Cecile. We had a lovely dinner cooked by Cecile finished off nicely by our contribution of desert.
Monday 19th
We had a quiet morning and packed everything up and said goodbye to Cecile. We shouldered our lighter than usual packs and headed out to Parc de la villette. Bernard Tschumi's 1980's creation situated in the far flung edge of the 19th arrondissement, bordering Boulevard Peripherique, the ring road which surrounds the actual 'city' of Paris and separates it from the greater suburban sprawl.
The big shiny ball and Nick...
Shiny ball and one of Tschumi's follies- Nick went to the toilet in this one... its ok there was a toilet there to use.
We wandered around enjoying the cool morning and the weird buildings that pepper the landscape, taking photos and walking on the paths to nowhere.
We had some lunch just across the road from the park and then headed out to the bus station for our 2 o'clock bus. The trip home wasn't quite so smooth. We were bound for the tunnel train, instead of the Ferry, supposed to be quicker but it wasn't and it was quite a pain really.
We had a great trip to Paris, if not frenetic, made especially lovely by our fabulous Parisienne hosts Martial and Cecile.
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