Gay Paris and car ferries
Hello again.
A pigeon shat on Mel. I asked Mel how I should introduce our visit to Paris and that is what she suggested. It is true, a pigeon did in fact shit on her and although this may be one of Mel’s lasting memories of Paris I thought we should start somewhat closer to the beginning.
For over a month Mel has been planning this weekend as a mystery weekend for me. I had no idea where we were going or what we were doing at all. I had absolutely no idea until Mel let it slip two days before we left. Still it was a surprise and a nice one too. We caught the midday bus from Victoria to gay Paris. The trip was eight hours in total. 2 hours on the bus to Dover, one and a half hours on the ferry to Calais and then three and a half to Paris. Having a break on the ferry was great and allowed us to get out and stretch our legs and eat. We went up on deck to watch some seagulls attack a poor boy who was trying to quietly eat a pie. The gulls were really dive bombing him hoping he would throw the pie at them. The bus from Calais to Paris went quite quickly. Mel and I entertained ourselves with drawing games. One of us would draw a silhouette of an animal without raising the pen off the paper and the other person had to guess what it was. This game was more successful than Mel’s Eye Spy, which I refused to play. This however didn’t stop Mel from playing by herself.
We arrived in Paris at 10pm and only had a short Metro ride to our hotel. The Metro is the underground system in Paris, not too dissimilar to the London Underground. Much cheaper though, at 80p for a ticket. Much airier too, the tunnels are wide and the platforms big and you don’t have to worry about “The Gap” between the platform and the train as the Parisians seem to be much better at designing their underground system and you don’t have to worry about stepping off the train and plummeting into the huge chasm between it and the platform. Everyone we had spoken to about the Metro had told us it is quite hard to navigate, especially as it is all in French. This reminded me of a time not so long ago when Mel and I first arrived in London and thought the same about the Tube. So we didn’t let any French signs or ticket machines stand in our way. French is fairly easy to translate. All you need to do is recognise a couple of key words and you find you can read French easy peasy. We bought our tickets and boarded our train. The trains are smooth and don’t appear to travel around nearly as many hairpin turns that the Tube does and you can actually hear yourself think. We changed at Opera and took the number 8 line to Ecole Militare. How easy was that. We walked out of the tube station and turned around to find the door to our hotel. After 9 hours of travelling that was a godsend.
We checked in and headed for the lift to the seventh floor. Well it was like a lift. More like an upright coffin. Mel convinced me to take the stairs and so the stairs it was. Our room was nice. We were right at the top and had a view over the buildings across the road and could see Hotel Des Invalides, where Napoleons tomb is located. We promptly collapsed on our bed and went to sleep.
The next day we were off on foot to explore Paris. We walked out of the hotel, took a right and there was the Eiffel Tower. Well you don’t have to look very hard anywhere in Paris to spot it. But we were right next door. We wandered through Parc Du Champ De Mars and as we approached the foot of the tower we saw queues 300 long of people waiting to climb the tower. And not just one queue. There were three. We decided you don’t have to climb the tower to see Paris and continued on across the river. We walked down Avenue Des Champs Elysees, the Musee D’art Modern, Place De La Concorde, Musee Du Louvre (with more queues hundreds of people long) and Notre Dame. Paris is fantastic for walking. Paris has wide-open sidewalks and even wider roads. The river is beautiful and you don’t get the feeling that you are boxed into a concrete jungle like you do in London. But I tell you, you sure get tired walking around on a warm summers day. We popped into a nice little restaurant down a small lane behind Notre Dame and enjoyed a welcome lunch. Mel ordered her meal in French and I couldn’t be bothered so I ordered in English. Mel had my pocket translator out and was memorising all the phrases before she needed them. Where is the toilet, can I have a glass of water. It is great fun learning a new language but is disheartening when the couple at then next table can speak German, Swedish, French and English. They were finding us amusing practising our French phrases.
After lunch Mel and I had a nice afternoon snooze and then hit the restaurants for dinner. We went to a nice French one, strangely enough and it was okay. We sat on the sidewalk and watched people until the sun set at 9:30.
The next day we wandered around the corner to the Hotel Invalides, a big beautiful building built for retired soldiers. That is one thing I really admire about the French is their respect for return service people. On the London Tube you will see signs on seats labelling them as priority seats for the elderly and mothers with children. On the Metro they are priority seats for return service men, then handicapped then mothers with children then elderly. The French have a wealth of respect for their returned soldiers. As they should when you look into the history of the Second World War. Something we did at the Hotel Invalides. There is a huge war museum about the second world war and I must say it is the best war museum I have ever been to. It was over 3 floors and as you walked through it took you from the start of the war, through the Nazi occupation of France, the underground French resistance, right through to Pearl Harbour and the conclusion of the war. They had multimedia displays and fantastic exhibits and it told the story as you walked through. It wasn’t just cabinets with bullets and guns in them. You walked out feeling like you have learnt a lot about the history of France’s participation in WWII. Amazing! You must visit, it puts a whole new perspective on the war that is not American or England biased. Sure it may be French biased but you have to see every perspective.
After the museum we visited Napoleons tomb in the same building. Very impressive. But it was just that, a big domed room with a marble crypt in the middle. Not nearly as informative but fitting that Napoleon should rest inside the Hotel Invalides. The hotel, as it is called, is still a retirement hospital for the elderly and it has fantastic grounds. Forget the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, the significance of this place is far greater.
As we left we saw one of those jump on jump off busses that give you a tour of Paris. We decided to check out the bits of Paris we missed on our walk and bought a couple of ticket. Well, we hopped on the open-air double Decker bus and had to sit at the back downstairs were you couldn’t see anything. We started to doubt the value of these tours. We hopped off the bus at a route intersection where you could changes buses and do another route. The buses were advertised as “every 10 minutes” but we found ourselves waiting for 40 minutes for the next one. This agitated us somewhat. We got on the bus and again found ourselves standing at the back this time. We drove around the corner, stopped outside the bus tour office and the driver disappeared. 20 minutes later he emerged and continued the tour. We were getting very frustrated at this stage so 5 minutes later we were off the bus deciding we would rather eat lunch than stand on a bus that cost good money that drove you around not being able to see anything. We ate lunch at a nice sidewalk café where the waiter spoke no English, fortunately Mel found a well of French she had hidden inside her and was spurting out, to her surprise, all the phrases she had learnt at school many years ago. I just sat there gob smacked as she ordered sandwiches and wine. Mel just looked at me and said “Where the hell did that come from”, I was very impressed. I learnt Latin at school and unfortunately I don’t think that is going to come spurting out anytime soon. “Caicilius est in de culina” is all I can dig up which means Caicilius is in the kitchen. Very useful!
We walked out of the restaurant to see another one of the buses approaching. We hopped on this one and managed to get a seat up on the open air deck. Hurrah!!! We visited really exciting places like the train station and another train station and then the Hard Rock Café, whooo hooo. How exciting. We changed buses again for the main tour and again found ourselves stopping at each bus stop for 20 minutes while the driver crammed as many people he could onto this bus. We had front row seat on the top at this stage so we were grateful of that. We visited the same site we saw the day earlier and a couple more. At this stage however Mel had had just about enough of sitting on a bus and after some negotiation and compromise we stayed on until we covered some of the sights we hadn’t seen then jumped off at the Eiffel Tower and walked back to our hotel. So I wouldn’t rate these buses highly. I would recommend taking the Metro instead.
Anyway that night we had another good meal at yet another French restaurant and retired to our room. The next day we did the return journey back to London and I must say we had a very enthusiastic bus driver. We boarded the bus at the terminal and had to wait 20 minutes for the late passengers. Mel and I were sitting at the front of the bus so we had to listen to our driver go on about everything from how he can’t go until the bus is full and how he fills his tank up outside of Paris and saves a bomb compared to London gas prices. He just didn’t stop. We learnt this was the first time he had done the Paris run and how it wasn’t his bus. So there is some important information for you if you ever want to take Eurolines then don’t bother turning up on time cause they will make everyone else wait until you get there anyway. So eventually we were off and had the longest journey back to London. First of all we were stopped at the tollgates at the end of the motorway to be inspected by French police. They went through the whole bus with a drugs dog and inspected every bag. 30 minutes later we were on the way back to Calais to find delays at the ferry. We only just made the ferry and crossed the channel to find ourselves being boarded by customs officials and had to spend another half an hour doing the customs thing. Usually someone comes on the bus and inspects the passport and then we are on our way again. For some reason this weekend they were being very strict at both ends. Perhaps a crazed mad man was trying to flee France after spending too long waiting on a jump on jump off bus and murdering everyone on it.
Anyway we got back into London eventually and within seconds of walking off the bus we realised how man weirdoes there are in London. We didn’t realise how civilised and normal Paris seemed until we were dodging people on the sidewalk, being passed by people in their own little worlds talking to themselves and having to cover our mouths from all the exhaust fumes from all the traffic. If we spoke French Mel and I decided we would be back to Paris to live in a flash. But for now I guess London is the place to be. We are heading back to France in a few weeks time to visit Reims in the Champagne district. Lovely lovely. Lots of drinking ahead of us there.
Oh before I forget, A pigeon did shit on Mel in a park on the way to the Louvre. I tell you what, I have never seen so much crap come out of one pigeon. The funny part of it was that Mel thought a spider had jumped on her arm and you can imagine the mess she made in her panic to get rid of the spider! Eeewww.
We are still having a great time over here and we are missing everyone very much. Although it is our turn for the summer so nyahhh nyahh nyahhh to all of you in the southern hemisphere!
Vaughan and Mel.