Paris, the city of . . . well, lots of things!

  Paris, France
Friday, December 5, 2008

 

If it is still dark
outside, it is hideously early no matter what time the clock says.  My alarm when off at a hideously early 6am
on the morning of Friday the 5th of December.  I could hear the wind howling and the rain
beating against the windows.  I sat up
to stop myself from falling back to sleep again.  I had spent the night dreaming of waking up only to realise I had
slept through my alarm, so I was determined not to let that become the
reality.  Five minutes later I was still
sitting up in bed, but my eyes were closed and I was on the brink of sleep
again. Jolting with the realisation that even sitting up wasn't keeping me
awake, and turned around and knelt on my bed, pulling the curtain aside an inch
to see what I was in for this morning. 

 

Eww.

 

There were shiny black
puddles, reflecting a black sky on the black tar of the car park, across which
I would soon be walking.  Just thinking
about it made me cold.  It would be
about minus 4 outside, I guessed.  I
rolled out of bed straight into the bathroom. 
Yes, our room is that small.  I close
the door so I could turn on the light without bothering Bek too much.  The light bit at my eyes, and an extra two
hours sleep seemed so much more appealing than Paris. 

 

I got ready, quite
quickly considering how tired I was.  I
was too tired to procrastinate.  I
grabbed a rice pudding from the fridge, and a spoon, and went down to the
kitchen to use the microwave (nothing quite like warm rice pudding in winter -
especially European winter).   It was
still dark, the rain riding on the back of the wind that was howling through
the black morning air.  Singlet top,
thermal shirt, turtle-neck woollen shirt, knitted jacket, rain coat, over coat,
scarf, beanie, hat, gloves, rice pudding: out I went into the cold.

 

I walked to the bus
stop, and arrived 20 minutes before the bus was due.  So, it was 20 minutes standing at a bus stop, outside, in the
cold, windy rain, in the dark.  I had
been there for about ten minutes when I saw two silhouetted figures
approaching.  It was only then that I
realised I was a little scared beneath my frozen skin. 

 

One of the figures put
an arm around the other, and I realised it as a couple.  It's probably not a particularly good
comment on society, but as soon as I realised that one of them was a woman, I
felt a little safer about these approaching people. 

 

The stopped at the bus
stop too, and we exchanged bonjours. 
They then talked together, and I eavesdropped to practise my listening
skills while playing golf on my phone. The bus arrived, we all got on, and then
it was on to the station.

 

Having already
mastered train travel, the journey was much less eventful than other
times.  On the train from La Rochelle to
Poitiers, the elderly lady I was next to asked me to turn her phone onto
vibrate, as you are meant to have your phone on silent on the flashy TGV (train
de great vitesse, a.k.a. über-fast train ).  
I totally understood her, totally figured out a French phone and totally
did an awesome job.  Yes, indeed.  I then changed at Poitiers onto another
train and continued on up to Gare Montparnasse. 

TGVs

It wasn't as easy to
find Rach and Dylan once I was there as I would have thought.  We were both at the entrance/exit to the
metro station, wondering where the other was. 
Did you know that there is, like, 4 different entrances to that metro
station?  Gah.  But eventually we figured it out, and Rachel found where I
was.  Her hair is so loooong and blonde!  My word! 
You can't miss her.  Her hair is
shiny and brilliant, like the sun.  They
were a couple of back-packers, bags on their back, poking up over their heads.
And there was I, just for the weekend, with a bag almost as big. 

 

After the hugging and
general joyfulness, and noticing for the first time that Rach has an Australian
accent, off we went back to the metro, to catch a train to Anvers, in
Montmartre, Paris.  Metro was packed, as
usual, and I think we all managed to knock a few people over with our bags, or
at least pin them against walls.  Buskers
played in the corridors of the underground stations, making soundtracks of
saxophones, violins, or xylophones for our memories of Paris.

Busker Xylophonist

 

Poor Rach and Dylan
had been up from frightfully early in the morning - 2:30am for Rach! - so we
headed straight for the hostel: The Village. 
We got there, with a little help from a random and kind French
woman.  In we went, and I was made
spokes-person, mainly because I had made the booking and because my French was
the best.  The rooms were cleaned
between 11 and 4, so we left our bag in the luggage room and went out to find a
much-needed cup of coffee. 

 

Our area seemed to be
very much the fabric and sewing end of town. 
Every other shop had rolls and rolls of material out the front, flapping
their brilliant colours in the breeze. 
We managed to find a café amid these non-edible delicacies, and I really
felt myself in Paris as I read the price list and noticed that a coffee was
more expensive if you had it in the salle than if you had it at the comptoir.
We lived frivolously and decided to have a coffee in the room instead of at the
beer-stained counter, where barista would become a fourth member of our
franglais conversation.

 

We got straight into
the Parisian way of things and started philosophising toute suite, about what,
I can't remember exactly, but I know it was profound.  Stuff about société and psyches, probably.  And the movie 'Trans-Siberia'.

Sacré Coeur Cathedral

Then, like any real
tourist in Paris, we grabbed some lunch at McDonalds and wandered up to the
Sacré Coeur, fries in hand.  Now, around
the Sacré Coeur there are the "string men". 
You must be wary of them.  They
come up to you and get you to give them your wrist, and they pretend to be
making you a bracelet, but what they actually do is tie up your wrist and then
not let you go until you give them money. 
As soon as we began heading towards the Sacré Coeur, we found them.  Or they found us.

Sacré Coeur up close and personal

One of the men
swaggered over, coming to stand in our path, string in his hands, already
reaching out for Rachel's wrist.  "Non,"
we all said to him, Rachel pulling her wrist closer to himself.  I was looking at him, and saying "Non"
probably more firmly than I have to anyone, and he asked me "Tu es française?"
(I guess because I seemed to be on to him, unlike many tourists who fall for
his immoral yet clever ploy). I would have loved to have said "Oui", except
that I was worried that my accent would give me away as I liar, so I answered
"non" to that too.  We pushed past him
and kept walking, him calling after us "be happy, man, be happy."

 

String Man

The steps to the Sacré
Coeur were crawling with these string men, and we had to say no to a few, and
leave them to pray on other unsuspecting holiday-makers.  From the top of the stairs we looked down
over the lower landings where people were getting their wrists tied up.  Not able to do anything, we watched on for a
few minutes, observing these men play their clever little game. 

Rach and me and the view from Sacré Coeur

Some photos at the
top, and then we went in to the cathedral. 
A service was in progress, so we sat down and stayed for some of it,
before leaving at the greeting of the peace, where there was a great smack of
kissing to be heard as the French congregation bised each other the peace of
God.  I bised* Rach, but that was enough
for me. 

*bise: the kiss on each cheek, as the french give in greeting or farewell or if they can't think of anything else to say.

Artisan Street

 

We wandered out and
down a gorgeous street lined with gorgeous shops and markets of paintings and
other artisan wares.  Portrait-artists
swarmed the street, approaching people and slipping them ready-made
compliments: "portrait? Only 15 minutes. 
You have a gorgeous face; it should be drawn; you're a beautiful
model."  Harder for the male artists to
slip these compliments to other men. 
One tried to get Dylan, and the compliment ended up being: "you have a
gorgeous beanie".  I think even the
artist realised that was as transparent as glass. (But this compliment wasn't
given at this time, that was the next day on the way to the Eiffel tower).

Rach and me in the Artists' courtyard

We stopped in some
shops and drooled over the paintings.  I
didn't buy any then - I intended to go back, but didn't get time to that week
end...  Hopefully when I am in Paris to fly
out of France I will have a chance to duck over and get one. We stopped at a
pub and had a drink in honour of Rachel's 21st, which was that day,
before continuing our exploration of Montmartre.  We found a gorgeous courtyard, filled by portrait artists and
Christmas decorations, including lights in the shape of paint palettes. 

Courtyard at night with Palette-shaped lights

We wandered on through and found the Moulin
Rouge, which was only a 10-15minute walk from our hostel.  Unfortunately, as I am finding with so much
in France, there was scaffolding around the Moulin, but that didn't stop the
show.

Scaffolded Moulin Rouge

The Show Must Go On

As we began our walk
back to the hostel, we really did come to realise that the Moulin Rouge really
is in its element in this end of town. 
Just as shop after shop near our hostel was a fabric shop, here I was
rows and rows of sex shops.  Ahh, Paris,
the romance of it all. 

The Theme of the Area

We ducked in to a supermarket
and picked up some pasta and pesto, went back to the hostel and cooked up some
din-dins.  It was delish.  Then it was up to our room, where we
discovered that instead of 3 beds of an 8 bed dorm as I had booked and paid
for, it was a 3 bed dorm - our own private room!  With a somewhat stunning view of the Sacré Coeur.  Rach and Dylan took the bunks, and I have
the bed right in front of that window, and I could lie in bed, admiring the
stunning Cathedral.

Gragon and the View from our Window

Rach and Dylan wrote
in their travel journals.  Well, Dylan
did, poor Rach, who had been up since 2:30am, fell asleep on my bed.  And I memorised the first stanza (out of 4)
for a poem I had to recite from memory for an oral exam on Tuesday.

Dylan at the Hostel

And so, our first day
in Paris was a success.

Rach at the Hostel