OK, so we’ve eaten dinner. We’re all dressed up (Jordan’s getting some mileage out of that wedding jacket!) and in the magical city of light and love, Paris. We’re infected with a feeling of being alive and being in an exciting new place. We knew that everything was up the river from us, so we decided to start walking north and see the magical city at night.
We had no idea how magical it would be. It took about 35 seconds for Jordan to fall in love with Paris, and another 2 seconds to start bitching about how shitty the city planning is in Los Angeles.
If only we had a camera with us that night to capture the beautiful light and the sunset, lighting the monuments and classical architecture with red and orange highlights. The river, slowly moving through the heart of the city. Young couples everywhere. People coming home from work, or dinner with friends. Scooters zipping by. People chatting at sidewalk cafes. Cobblestone squares. Art deco Metro stations. As we walk, we pass amazing old buildings on all sides. They are so elaborate, made of huge stone blocks, intricate and permanent and just incredible. Impossible to build today. Soon we are at the Louvre. We walk the grounds, into the Jardin des Tuileries. Large expanses of grass in the dark evening. Quiet pools. Statues in the darkness. Behind us, the guards are shutting things down, closing down the property.
Katie remembers that there’s a ferris wheel on the river, so that becomes our new mission: to ride the slow ferris wheel on the bank of the Seine. We talk to several people who ought to know, and none have any idea what we’re talking about. Apparently “Ferris wheel” isn’t a term that the French use. In the end, Jordan sketches one in the dirt, and a security guard finally realizes what we’re asking. Bad news – the ferris wheel won’t be set up for another month. Mission denied.
That doesn’t stop our night. We walk off the grounds to a bridge across the Seine – the Pont de la Concorde. We sit on the stone railing of the bridge and watch the water go by… the people having dinner on the roof of a houseboat below us… tourists wave from a boat that slips under the bridge. Paris has an entire city department devoted to illuminating the city at night, to making it beautiful. Does any American city have something similar? The Parisians are clearly masters of the art. We are calm and rested and at peace in a beautiful city. Can life get much better?
Finally the hour catches up to us and we grow tired. We decide to head back to the hotel. We get on a local bus and ride, the Seine not even a block on our right. The city rolls past us. A woman on the bus is eyeing us. Yes, we’re American tourists. You can probably tell us from a mile away. But tonight, we don’t care. We’re just people, appreciating a beautiful city. Only one more stop to go. The woman gets off. She stares at Katie from outside the bus. Katie stares at her, worried she’s about to be insulted. The woman turns and points. Katie looks – the woman is pointing to the Eiffel Tower. It’s lit up, with flashing lights running all the way up and down the Tower. It’s breathtaking, an incredible sight! (they do it for 10 minutes at the beginning of each night hour.) The woman smiles at us and the bus pulls away. Not an insult at all, she just knew we were new to the city and that we would appreciate those magical, twinkling lights – she was right. Thank you, strange French lady!
Finally, it’s our stop. Apparently in France, you get off the bus by using the rear doors. Ignorant of the basic protocol, we tried to get out the front and messed the whole system up!
Friday, June 13, 2008
Day 5 - Paris at last!
We take a taxi from our hotel to the train station. We’ll take a local train to Nice, and then get on the high-speed TVG train for a 4-hour 1st class trip to Paris! Our taxi driver tells us a great story about how his parents were supposed to emigrate to America from Russia in the 1920s, but they got sick and had to get off the boat early – in France. They never finished their journey, and now their son is in his 60s and thoroughly French. He said he still has their visas to enter the US!
All of our great plans fall apart when we get to the local train station and find out we’ll miss our rendezvous with the TVG high-speed train if we follow the original plan. There’s a huge line of people behind us and the clerk speaks very little English. She’s insisting we take the local train to a different station to meet the TVG. We freak out, but take a chance that she’s not exercising an instinctive hatred of Americans, and follow her advice. When we get off, a helpful train guy tells us that we’re going to be fine. He says we’re picking up the TVG one station later than planned. WHEW!
The TVG is a 2-story train and we’ve got reserved seats on the upper deck! The French countryside races by. Fields, lakes, hills, farms, towns, cities… it’s amazing to look at the things we pass and wonder if they were built by Romans, or Gauls, or someone even earlier. What’s it like to live surrounded by so much history? Wish we had pictures to show you… read on to find out the terrible tale of why we can’t!
Arriving in Paris, we step out into the most amazing old train station you can imagine. Iron girders soaring high into an arched roof, massive trains lining the endless platforms, the hubbub of people everywhere – the Gare de Lyon station was incredible. Jordan was so excited he wanted a picture – and that’s when we discovered the camera was missing. We’d taken photos of each other on the train and that’s the last we saw of it. Jordan races back to the train to search it before the cleaning crews start work, but the camera is nowhere to be found in our car. It’s a total mystery.
Stepping out onto the street - SK’DOOSH!! - the feeling hits that we are truly in Paris! In front of us are streets crowded with Mercedes cabs, scooters zipping madly around them, and huge avenues of classic Napoleon-era apartments. You know the ones – pointy roofs, little round windows on the top floors, wrought-iron balconies – there were posters of them on the walls of every girls’ room in your dorm at college. Jordan is gawking and oohing-and-ahhing like the tourist he is. Katie’s the old pro and secures us a cab. Driving to the Marais, Jordan is still slack-jawed. Tourist! Good thing there’s nothing in the cab to trip on.
Our hotel is perfectly situated in the heart of everything, on Rue de Rivoli near the Hotel De Ville (not to be confused with Cruella DeVille, she lives somewhere else where they allow dogs). Unfortunately, our hotel is narrow and tiny. Even ants think it’s tiny. Only one of us can fit in the elevator with our luggage and our room is on the 5th floor! Once we get up there, it’s like a rental in Alphabet City – TINY TINY TINY! We can barely fit.
(yes, that's Jordan touching both walls simultaneously! And he's not even stretched out all the way!)
The shower has a 6-inch high rim on the floor to keep the water in, but the curtain hangs far beyond the rim, which guarantees we will soak the floor every time we shower:
But the biggest stumper is how to turn on the lights! We click all of the light switches in every possible combination for at least 20 minutes, in the dark, to no avail. Two college educations, gone to waste. Eventually the desk clerk solves the mystery – you stick your square plastic room key into a slot above the light switch, and that “approves” the power in the apartment. Really? That’s your design premise? Really?
It’s time to for a laundry trip, so the minimum wage student working the front desk (an Asian girl with bright purple contact lenses) gave us the card of a nearby laundromat. Inside was a kind fellow who didn’t speak much English, but did speak the universal language of yes-I’ll-wash-your-undies. Love you! We left him with a couple bags of filth. Our way of making a good name for Americans.
Now it’s dinner time and we’re ready for something satisfying. No more baguettes, please! We need something new. We wander our Paris neighborhood, checking out the many restaurants. Just like in J-le-P, all the menus have a section for salads, pizzas, and main courses. I thought a place like France would scorn pizza, but it’s more common on the menus here than it is in the States. Unfortunately, prices in Paris are just as expensive as J-le-P – about $35 per person. Just when we thought we’d die of hunger and frustration, there it was in front of us – BREAKFAST IN AMERICA! (that’s the name of the restaurant – really!)
It looks like a classic American diner. Could it be? Please? We walk in. The waitresses are speaking to each other in English. One is even wearing a Ramones T-shirt! The menu’s in English and it’s all the food we want! – burgers, chicken sandwiches, fries, nacho chips, beer! The answer to all our prayers! Much gluttony and satisfaction ensues. Plus our waitress is a great source of tips – including where to find movies in English. That’ll come in handy in couple days…
