We'll always have Paris
Trip Start
Dec 14, 2007
1
127
187
Trip End
Mar 16, 2009
Paris,
Île-de-France,
France
Friday, August 29, 2008
After six days in Paris, I could not find a single reason not to love this city! Paris is an incredibly beautiful city that has a fascinating history, is cleaner than many cities we've visited, has a some traffic congestion, but nothing as horrible as Dubai, for example, and we found every Parisian we encountered to be nothing but friendly and polite.
To orientate ourselves in this rather large city we joined a free walking tour of the city that basically works on a tip system.
Entry to the Louvre
If you enjoyed the tour you can tip the guide whatever you think the tour was worth, if you thought it was a waste of time you pay nothing. A very novel approach where the more they give the more they get and where good entertaining guides can make quite a bit of money. Our guide for the day was a very entertaining and charismatic Aussie chap and we had a great time and learnt a lot about the city in a very short space of time. At night Paris transforms into a wonder land of glittering light and colour. To make the most of this we joined a bicycle tour of the city that took past all the major attractions and the tour also included a wine and river cruise (see the connection). It was awesome seeing the Eifel tower at night, especially when on the hour it transforms from a French blue Eifel to a massive white blinking Eifel.
A visit to Paris is not complete unless you have visited some of its famous museums. Of the 20 - 30 museums available to visit we picked the Impressionist museum (Musee d' Orsay) or as I call it the finger painting museum which we thoroughly enjoyed and the enormous Louvre Museum which one its own will consume the better part of a months to explore.
The biggest attraction at the Louvre is without a doubt the Mona Lisa, and even though we arrived quite early there was already a sizable crowd that had gathered around this little painting. Sadly the little lady is kept behind a thick pane of glass which is cordoned off so you can't get too close. I was not sure what all the fuss was about but the Mona Lisa is the type of painting that the more you look at it the more it sucks you in
Louvre
. To start with the half smile half grin gets you wondering what the joke is and her posture is very inviting but the slightly parted fingers are a little unsettling. Then there is the background which does not quite seem right, as if the one side is a little higher than the other. Leonardo Da Vinci was not the type of artist to make mistakes not just add random details unless they had some sort of meaning. What it all means I am still not sure, but when you see some of his other painting you begin to wonder, what was this guy on? Or is he having us on?The rest of the museum was just as fascinating and I really enjoyed the details in many of the paintings and sculptures after four hours my legs were packing up and my stomach started eating itself. To do the Louvre justice you would need a few days, which is doable as you can get multiday passes and then pop in for a few hours every day.
Some friends we had met while diving in Borneo lived in Paris and we were looking forward to meeting up for dinner with them. We asked Frederique to make some suggestions and agreed to meet on Sunday afternoon. She really went out of her way and planned an awesome day that started at a gallery that was displaying an exhibition by the famous French sculptor Cesar. His work required a lot of interpretation and was a little strange as he experimented with different forms when expanded and contracted or crushed. He also had some interesting work where he used an ancient technique to expand small models of human body parts, I know this sounds a little naughty but it was all above the belt.
Later on we met up with Frederique's boyfriend Cyril, who then joined us at the Centre Pompidou which is a modern art museum/exhibition hall
The famous little lady
. We saw a very interesting photographic exhibition by a Czech guy, Miroslav Tichy who had built his own cameras in the 50's constructed out of old camera bits, cardboard and basically anything he could get his hands on. His work considering the tools was best described as intriguing as it tried to show people in a half real half dream state.The rest of the exhibition hall was filled with what would guess was modern art. I might not have appreciated it all by it did get me thinking about what 'art' really is? We saw some work by Jackson Pollack which to me was just way to random for me to appreciate and I often had to fight back the laughter. There were many other pieces which looked more like mistakes than art, but then again, I have realised the term art obviously has some very broad definitions.
After topping up on a little culture, we were taken to a lovely little French restaurant, where we had a delectable affordable meal and a gorgeous bottle of Syrah from the Coteaux Du Languedoc region. It was really nice to be able to catch up with Frederique and meet Cyril and we were sorry her Borneo partner in crime Carol could not make it. Next time in South Africa!
Oh, I almost forgot before we went home we stopped off at an ice-cream shop in an area that apparently sells Paris' best ice-cream called Bertillon. Well we've had some good ice cream in New Zealand and in Italy but this was quite something else. I could go into a long explanation of how good it was but will rather leave it at this; DON'T LEAVE PARIS WITHOUT TRYING THIS ICE-CREAM!
Dont worry it wont hurt...
In general we had been very lucky with the weather in Europe and we had almost perfect weather in Paris, which apparently can be very gloomy at times. We had started noticing that the further north we were travelling the cooler it was getting and now that summer was officially over and we moved into autumn we had to dig the layers out from the bottom of our bags.
Paris and even France have far surpassed my expectations and I found it hard not to fall in love with quality of life. We'll miss the romantic parks and waterways where couples are always seen kissing or in an embrace, we'll miss the beautiful French language that we sadly learnt so little of, we'll miss the rich cultural heritage and awe-inspiring architecture and lastly we'll miss the amazing food and incredible wines. The French have not seen the last of the Vine Hooligans, we will be back!
Lastly into a subject I was hoping I would never have to discuss or document in this blog. To understand our dilemma you have to realise and you might have picked it up in our previous blog entries that travelling through Europe and not sampling all its amazing food, wine and beer is almost impossible. A large part of what makes Europe so amazing is its gastronomic delights that are part of its culture and charm. Sadly however, what goes around becomes round and no mater how much we seem to try and shake it off the excess weight, it just keeps following. Wherever we can we choose to walk or climb the stairs to burn up a few more of those extra yummy calories we've been consuming but the progress seems slow if not dormant. I'm afraid our next stop, Belgium, is not going to help this cause.
