Twas
summer, as as the English sun beat
foppishly down upon the
populace of London, some of
them
completely lost their minds and turned to
rioting.
Happily this
madness coincided with Russ' birthday and I
had planned to take him to Paris so
we were outta there! I
have wanted to catch the eurostar but I
happened to find cheap flights to Paris
with BA, sometimes it does happen, so
we flew out and landed at Charles De
Gaulle. This gave me a chance to test
out my French and buy us train tickets
into Port Royal station near where we
were staying. The French, I've found, are
lovely all you have to do is say
Bon Jour when you enter a shop, Merci
when you leave and try to speak a
little French in between and they're as
helpful as helpful can be. I got
through the asking of tickets part but
everything that came after was a blur.
The ticket lady smiled and reverted to
English, I was sheepish but grateful.
As we settled
ourselves on the train, a procession of
beggars who I think were Roma, came up
to us at spaced intervals. Sometimes a
teenage girl just holding our her hand
for money, sometimes a little girl followed
by her grand mother who was singing but
always women. We did see young boys
begging during our time in Paris but
never men. I have to say I did
find myself getting aggravated by the
begging, just the sheer volume of times
in a day you had to say no to
people and how persistent they are. Had
I of said yes, even to every second
person I would have had to join them
in begging in a day. We would find
sometimes that, particularly around Montmatre or
the Champs Elysee if you stopped for a
moment to sit down you got swarmed on.
There was one group of teenage kids
begging around Montmatre that seemed to have
a whole scam going, they all had clip
boards and would pretend to be deaf and
dumb, they would thrust their clipboards at
people, presumably under the rouse of
signing a petition for charity. Then when
the person signed, they'd hit them up
for money, quite aggressively, sometimes holding
people and stopping them from leaving. We
knew they weren't deaf and dumb though
because we heard them talking to each
other on the other side of Sacre Couer
earlier in the day. I don't know if
it was just coincidental that we had
that much experience of beggars but it
definitely seemed like there were more
around than in Rome, Venice or London.
The politics of why they were there,
what their lives are like or how they
can preserve their culture in the modern
world would take all day to debate and
still not be resolved, but for little
old me living a sheltered life in
Australia, this was something I hadn't
experienced on this scale before.
Paris itself
though, was generally quite relaxed, it was
summer holidays and a number of shops
were closed. Particularly all the patisseries
that we'd hoped to visit, which gives
us an excuse to return.
We
stayed at The Apostrophe Hotel, just off
the Boulevard Du Monparnasse, each room was
decorated to a theme, cleverly designed and
had amazing showers. Definitely one for
couples though as unless you're particularly
close to your travelling companion, the
shower area doesnt have a door closing
it off from the rest of the room.
We had beautiful breakfast in bed each
morning and watched French music television
because we couldn't understand the other
shows. There was this one song, You and
Me by a guy called Mylo which was
in English but when you listened to it
sounded like a love song for a serial
killer. This morning music video watching
though did start off my new found
interest in Julien Dore, you don't have
to know what a song is about to
like it.
After first
arriving in Paris, getting ourselves to the
hotel and dumping our stuff we headed
out for an explore, grabbed lunch in a
nice little cafe across from the Luxembourg
Gardens before wandering leisurely through the
gardens and down to a book shop by
the Seine called Shakespeare
and Company. It was one of the things
we most wanted to see while there, its
an English language bookshop that was run
by a man called George Whitman since
1951 though in the beginning it was
known by a different name. The book
shop is now run mainly by Georges
daughter Sylvia and I was sad to hear
that George himself passed away December
2011. The bookshop is so well known
because of him and who he was. He
would host writers in the bookshop, allowing
them to stay there for free, do a
little work in the shop and spend their
time reading and writing. The bookshop
itself is magical. A cave where you can
retreat from the rest of Paris and find
a treasure of your own on one of
the heaving shelves.
We walked
until our legs fell off and then
retreated to the comfort of our little
room.
Our first
full day was spent around Montmatre, walking
up the steps to Sacre Couer and then
exploring all the lanes behind it. They
have a winery there, we found the vines
appearing randomly on a street corner in
amongst the houses, some of the cafe's
around Montmatre sell the wine grown
there. We then made our way back into
the centre of town and caught an open
top bus which took us around all the
major sites and allowed us to orient
ourselves. We got our first glimpse of
the Eiffel tower, the Arc De Triomphe
and the Louvre. We walked down the
Champs Elysee, bought a gift for Russ'
Mum and then made our way back to
Monparnasse for dinner as the sun went
down.
Day 2 was
Pere Lachaise day , Russ had been to
Paris before but I hadn't, and the last
time he went, he went wandering around
Pere Lachaise on his own and had missed
some of its highlights like Oscar Wilde's
grave and Pissaro's grave. This time we
came in the front entrance and had a
map to guide us around. We wandered
around the increasingly ornate memorials in
light summer drizzle til hunger drove us
out and into a near by cafe for
baguettes. We tried more pastry shop
searching but everything was closed, in
frustration we wandered left out of our
hotel and kept walking til we came to
Rue Mouffetard, it was everything we'd been
looking for, an open pastry shop, a
market during the day, endless restaurants
at night, it became our favourite street.
We stayed til dark, got drunk on very
unfrench mojitos and wandered back to our
hotel satisfied.
Day 3 was
Russ' birthday and it was Louvre Day.
As we'd found an open pastry shop we
went there and bought him birthday pastries.
I had an incredible chocolate and caramel
tart, every bite dissolving in my mouth,
buttery smoothness, a little salty hint of
caramel followed by cocoa. We headed down
to the metro and caught the train to
Musee Du Louvre stop and this is a
good tip if you're planning to visit
the Louvre, go to the Palais Royal
Musee Du Louvre stop, head to platform
1 and follow the signs from there, you
can enter via the shopping centre underneath
the Louvre rather than the Pyramid and
save yourself time lining up.
After getting
tickets and lining up we made our way
to the sculpture room in the basement
so Russ could sketch. He sketched and I
wrote while people came and stared at
us as though we were the exhibits. Some
even took photos. We stopped occasionally to
down the rest of our pastry before the
security guards came and told us off
for eating in the Louvre. It is not
allowed!
After
Louvre time, we went to sit an enjoy
the sun in the Tuillerie Gardens next
door with yet more pastry. We had time
to make up for but this last pastry
did us in, a Mont Blanc from
Angelina's, so much cream, so much chestnut
puree. We ended our last evening again
in Rue Mouffetard taking in our melancholy
last looks at places we'd become attached
to and planning when we could make it
back to Paris. And now we have another
city that we must compulsively visit like
an elderly relative, we found so much
in Rome that we want to return to
and now we also have so much in
Paris to come back to. Our honeymoon
will be in Venice. I hope Russ loves
it as much as I did.
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