Paris: The begining

  Paris, France
Saturday, March 4, 2006

DAY 1-2 SUN-MON Our daughter Alexandra dropped us off at Eastwood Station with eighteen minutes to spare. Four minutes later we realized that we had forgotten Margaret's camera. Another thirteen minutes slipped by while I took a taxi home to collect it. The train arrived whilst I was still at the bottom of the steps and I shed several pounds in sweat hauling our two bags (a combined weight of 50 kilos) onto the platform and into the carriage. We laughingly agreed that this would be our first and last disaster of any magnitude during the trip. We were incorrect.

At the airport we were startled to find that both of our bags were heavier than the permitted twenty-one kilos. At the request of the lady checking us in I removed two boxes of matches from deep within my enormous suitcase, which made absolutely no difference to the scales. She didn't care, which was something of a relief. I bought one of those bags that you wear around your neck and under your shirt and decided to transfer the contents of my wallet as soon as we reached our studio. In hindsight this was an awfully dumb decision and was to have dire consequences.

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport after a long but uneventful flight and took the shuttle to the RER station nearby. I had been rehearsing what I was going to say to the man at the ticket office for several hours. "Je voudrais deux billets a Blanche, s'il vous plaît". He was most impressed, giving me two thumbs up and a big smile. "Good pronunciation" was his adjudication. The RER station appeared to have been designed to make entry to Paris as difficult as possible for arriving tourists. There were no gates through which one could pass with large suitcases and I joined a queue of disgruntled travellers waiting to manhandle their luggage over the narrow turnstiles.

Riding on the Metro during peak hour with two bags and a backpack was quite a challenge, but we arrived at Blanche in high spirits. Our studio wasn't ready, so we were asked to leave our stuff in the baggage room. It was then that I noticed that I felt different. Something wasn't there. It was my wallet! We now had an explanation for the incident at Blanche when two men jostled us as we dragged our bags through the exit flaps.

With the help of the receptionist we cancelled my cards and headed off to report the theft to the police. The nearest police station was at Anvers, two Metro stops away. We sought direction at an Internet café where I transferred all my money to Margaret's account. The manager pretended not to know what Margaret was talking about when she asked the way to the police station, but when I posed the same question, man to homme, gave me detailed directions..

Even with Pierre's reluctant assistance we had a hard time finding the place. Our wanderings took us through some of the more seedy areas of the city, peopled almost entirely by immigrants from the Ivory Coast and rather rough-looking whites. The cops spoke little English but provided a form on which I could describe what had happened and what I'd lost. The young officer who interviewed us was patient and friendly and we left secure in the belief that the thieves would be caught and our property returned in short order.

Rather than catch the train again we walked back to the studio, stopping along the way at a rather squalid bar for a couple of beers. On our previous trip to Paris we had travelled everywhere by train, not realising how close together everything is and how much more pleasant walking could be. On this holiday we only took the Metro a couple of times.

As I write: Margaret is watching TV. The unembalmed body of the Pope is being carried from his apartment while a choir drones the Litany of the Saints.

In the afternoon we explored the Cimetière de Montmartre, the entrance to which was at the end of our street. What better way to round off a disastrous day than to spend a few hours touring a cemetery? I had a map showing the cemetery's complement of famous graves, but most of them eluded us. I was anxious to take as many photos as possible and enthusiastically snapped the tombs of Njinsky, Offenbach and Berlioz. The man who invented the saxophone was there, as was the genius who invented processed sugar, but my favourite was the grave of Francois Truffaut, the film director. A plain marble slab, it was strewn with Metro tickets and soggy cigarettes, tributes from his many admirers.



At the end of the day Margaret and I were hopeful that all our ill fortune was behind us. On the bright side for me (though not for my companion) was the knowledge that Margaret would have to do all the driving as my driver's license had been stolen along with my credit cards.

As the day wound down we sipped coffee on our balcony and watched four tough-looking policemen searching some youths in the street below. Perhaps the Paris gendarmerie had been mobilised to find my wallet! I filmed the event on my new video camera for the enjoyment of our sons David and Tim, who had been subject to similar harassment in Sydney. Some time later we walked the streets in search of a suitable eating place, foolishly ignoring several cheap Asian places and settling instead on an exorbitantly expensive French restaurant where they served us very large and under cooked meals which left us feeling bloated and considerably poorer. As we sat at our outside table we watched the people go by. Husbands clutching their baguettes, women taking their dogs for walks and young men giving Margaret and the other female diners appraising glances. It seems that every second person in Paris has a dog. Huge, furry beasts, tiny scurriers, leashed and unleashed.

We hurried through the drizzle to the warmth of our studio, anxious to sleep away the stress of our first day and begin the next refreshed and revitalized.

DAY 3 TUE Margaret's biological clock was confused during the night. She woke several times. So did I, roused from deep sleep by the sound of Vatican celebrations on CNN as Margaret watched the carrying of the late Pope's body from one place to another. Then she watched the instant replay of the carrying of the late Pope's body from one place to another. Riveting television which Margaret was to enjoy, and me to endure, for the next week.

Spurning the Metro we walked all the way to Sacré Coeur. Place du Tetre was much smaller than we remembered and the street artists had not yet finished setting up their stalls. A few sketchists asked that they be permitted to draw our portraits, purely as "demonstrations" you understand. I recalled similar approaches in Fiji where we fell for the spiel and ended up paying big money for the "demonstration". We politely declined and they immediately turned on their heels in search of more naïve tourists.



Sacré Coeur was imposing and rather beautiful. We couldn't agree with the guidebooks that it was an abomination. The inside of the church was equally impressive and quite atmospheric. A number of the side chapels contained pictures of the recently departed Pope and offered candles of various sizes and prices which one could light in his memory. I lit a total of six but pretended that I thought they were free. I later felt guilty and resolved to attend six Masses in atonement.

Once outside we hastened to a nearby WC. I am proud to say that I was the only male tourist game to use the urinals. This was not surprising as they were separated from the queue of females by a rather revealing waist high wall. I couldn't help noticing that a number of ladies joined the queue for a second time just to pass the urinals again.

Margaret had been assigned the task of counting the number of steps from the church down to the bottom of the hill. Her employer, Dr. Van der Weyden, had disputed the number with his wife. We counted two hundred and twenty one, which should please the good doctor.

The backstreets of Montmartre were narrow and cobbled and often very steep. The prettiest was Rue de l'Abreuvoir, all the more enjoyable because tourists hadn't discovered it. We saw the last remaining vineyard in Montmartre, an area once famous for its wine growing, then searched the area for the Cimetière St Vincent which, when we eventually stumbled upon the entrance, proved to be a disappointment as it contained only a bunch of nobodies.

We bought a baguette (Margaret insisted upon pronouncing it as baguette whilst I plumped erroneously for bag-u-ette) at a small baguette shop just around the corner from the studio and shared it in our room before setting off for the shopping area near the Opéra Garnier. Our principal destination was La Fayette, a huge department store on the famous Rue Haussman whose main attraction was its beautiful ceiling/cupola. I trailed Margaret around the ladies' clothing department, trying not to look bored or grim. Handbags for $2,500! Scarves for several hundred dollars! Madness. Even Margaret wasn't tempted.

One of the lifts was broken. Having been trapped for several minutes ourselves we watched with amusement as other people crowded into it, travelled downwards for one floor then emerged indignantly several minutes later. We could have spent a pleasant few hours in this manner but there were other clothes and handbags to look at. I followed Margaret very closely as we went from one display to another, expressing sympathetic horror at the sinful cost of bags, scarves, shoes and so on.

Once we had escaped the endless clothes departments of La Fayette we walked down to the Opéra where we stood for a while admiring its beauty. It was OK, but Parisians must grit their teeth in envy when they see pictures of Sydney's Opera House. The nearby Church of the Trinity was acceptable, though not particularly inspiring and we strolled home feeling that we had spent the day most productively. Yesterday's drizzle was absent and the temperature quite warm, though we agreed that it didn't really warm up until after lunch.