Paris: Part 3

On Friday we jumped straight onto the metro and headed back towards the Île de la Cité where we were going to visit La Conciergerie, a former palace and prison, and its Salle de Gens d'Arms is the largest surving gothic hall in the world.

We took ourselves on a tour of the hall and connecting cells where the soon-to-be executed 'enemies of the revolution' were held. It was quite interesting to read the names and professions of the people who had been guillotined.

Next door (and a quite significant queue later) is the Saint-Chappelle, the chapel of Louis IX, built to house his collection of holy relics. The stained glass in this chapel is amazing, taking up almost the entirity of the wall space of the chapel. Some people say this chapel is a highlight over even Notre Dame and it would be difficult to disagree with them.

Now this is where it gets a bit hazy because I didn't take any photos, but somewhere in here we walked around the Latin Quarter, visiting the Christmas markets (where Linda saw some lamb's-wool gloves she would covet for the remainder of our trip) and had a very minimal snack in a highly overpriced café. We rounded this off with a lightning-fast visit (if you exclude the queue-sitting) to the Musée d'Orsay, which holds some amazing pieces of impressionist art.

Considering our late start, and the amount of time we spent waiting around in queues, it was already getting dark and we decided against scaling the Eiffel Tower in favour of taking a ride on the ferris wheel that sits in the Place de la Concorde. We thought this would be a bit of a disappointment and that we were doing it more 'because it is there' than through high expectations of what we would see; perhaps this is why we thought it was so fantastic!

When we got to the top of the ferris wheel we had an amazing view over Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in one direction, up the Champs-Elysees in another, and the rest of Paris behind us. We went crazy snapping photos, sparing a few moments to take advantage of the romantic location (the Italian couple in the same car, who were clearly more focussed on the romance aspect, must have thought we were a bit weird).

Have I mentioned we did a lot of walking around Paris? We continued walking up the Sienne and past the Grand Palais before grabbing a Croque Monsieur in a cafe near the Eiffel Tower (it would be an ongoing mission throughout our trip to find the perfect Croque Monsieur) and ultimately going for a stroll under the tower. As an aside, I actually had a preference for the Croque-Madame, which is the same thing but with a fried egg on top - how can you argue with that!

Because the Eiffel Tower is such a conspicuous landmark, and because it was doing an hourly flashy-light show, I think we must have taken about a zillion photos of it. The same can probably be said for Notre Dame, which is similarly spectacular when lit up at night.

Our ultimate disappointment in the Eiffel Tower would not come until later in our trip.

Paris: Part 2

On Thursday we got up and walked down the Champes Elysees towards Place de la Concorde (previously Place de la Revolution, where thousands were beheaded during the revolution), and on to the Tuileries Gardens. It was a grey day outside but there was still plenty of people walking through the park.

This took us through to the Louvre, which we had both been to before and had no real desire to visit again, being so large and somewhat overwhealming. We did, however, pop into the tourist office there which managed to provide us with almost zero information but did have an internet kiosk so we quickly checked up on some facts. We also visited the boutique chocolate shop, Salon du Chocolat, and bought some amazingly rich eclairs, which sufficiently boosted our blood-sugar levels to motivate us to head back out into the cold.

We wandered into the Jardin du Palais Royal nearby, since neither of us had been there before, and were impressed by the (sometimes silly) sculpture on display. We strolled through the gardens and around the mostly-closed shops around the perifery of the courtyard before heading out again.

To complete the day of sight-seeing we walked down to the Île de la Cité where Notre Dame is located. We queued up outside the cathedral (apparently post-Christmas is a busy time in Paris) and walked through the inside, which is really quite impressive.

By this time it was really getting quite dark, which is when I realised just how amazing the city looks at night. While during the day it is mostly shades of grey (especially given the overcast sky), at night the monuments and bridges are all up-lit and the sky takes on the colours of the city lights. I don't think we saw a single star the whole time we were in Paris.

We had dinner in a crêperie that Linda had discovered on her previous trip to Paris (and a place we would go back to several more times during out stay, due to its good quality food that was priced right for our budget), and spent the remainder of the day wandering around the islands on the Seine and ultimately climbing up the Arc de Triomphe to check out the view of the city at night.

We returned back to our little apartment exhausted, but highly satisfied, by our big first day.

Paris: Part 1

On the lead-up to Christmas we wondered what we were going to do for NYE. We looked into a number of options; Barcelona, Zermatt, but we decided Paris would be a good place to be for NYE and for visiting generally. Linda managed to track down a tiny apartment a couple of blocks from the Champs-Élysées where most of the NYE action would be centred and picked up some TGV tickets just before they all ran out.

On boxing day we packed our bags and hopped on the train to Lausanne, from where we would be catching the TGV. I expected the TGV to go via Geneva, a journey I am by now very familiar with so spent the first part of the trip reading our Paris guidebook, but when I looked out the window I got an unexpected view as we had instead traveled 'inland' to the North and away from the lake.

As we progressed the landscape turned white with frost on all the trees and ground. We were both amazed as we had never seen anything like it, with the whole scene completely white. It wasn't like snow where big clumps hung on everything, but instead it just looked like the landscape had all its colour removed. At one point we saw a fox running through a frozen field, possibly in pursuit of a rabbit or mouse.

We continued on into France, arriving at Gare de Lyon and transferring to a metro towards Franklin D. Roosevelt station. We popped out right on the Champes-Elysees and walked the few blocks toward our apartment. We were early so we grabbed a cafe and some pastries at a local brasserie and waited for the owner of the apartment to contact us. And waited, and waited.

Originally we were going to meet at 4pm, then this got changed to 6pm, and when he still hadn't contacted us by 8pm (despite many attempted calls and text messages) we were really getting quite anxious. This was especially the case as we had found the apartment on craigslist and sent through a deposit but otherwise had no real assurance about who this person was. We did find his name on a postbox which made us feel marginally more confident but still very anxious since we knew it would be just about impossible to find a hotel at this late time between Christmas and NYE.

Eventually he did show up, looking slightly sheepish and apologetic (his return flight was delayed and his phone ran our of batteries), and he showed us into the apartment which was tiny but well laid out and really a lot better equipped than a hotel room would have been (and also a hell of a lot cheaper).

We dumped our bags in the apartment and took ourselves for a walk up the Champs-Élysées towards the Arc de Triomph, admiring the Christmas lights in the trees lining the avenue. Finally, we felt like we were really in Paris.