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paris

We decided that we wanted to get away for New Year's and do something special to greet the new millennium. Yes, that's right...the new millennium. According to some people (boyfriend included), 2000 wasn't the start of the millennium as there's no year 0 in our calendar- but I digress. Here's an account of our week in Paris with several pictures (and more to come).

Thursday, December 28/00

The back garden covered in snow.

Snow! Cambridge is covered in snow this morning and even I'm impressed with how much has fallen. This is not amusing for Tony who has to get us from here to Gatwick airport, which is about a 2 hour drive when the weather's good. It's a slippery slushy journey south, but we manage to make it to Gatwick with plenty of time to spare. In fact, we've got too much time to spare as our flight has been delayed for an hour due to the weather. Gatwick is that airport near London that isn't Heathrow. It's got squat all in it with very little to entertain you if you have time to kill. We wander around, look at shops (is there a Tie Rack in every airport in the world, or is it just me?), and keep checking the monitors for updates.

Finally, our flight is announced and we're on our way. It's an amazingly short 40 minute flight. Amazing to a Canadian, anyway. It's hard for me to comprehend that you can get on a plane for 40 minutes and end up in another country that speaks another language. Sure, you could get on a plane in Toronto and maybe 40 minutes later end up in Buffalo, but that's not nearly as exotic. I can see the coast of England below me as we start to cross the channel and mere minutes later, I can see the coast of France. Not surprisingly, France looks like every other country from above- a patchwork of farms and roads. I find it odd seeing cars driving on the right after living in the UK for the past few months. I've got to switch gears back into Montreal mode- traffic on the right and speaking French. Two friends of mine in Montreal told me that they had been quacked at when speaking French in Paris. Yes, quacked at. Apparently, Quebecois(e) people sound like ducks when they speak French. Needless to say, I'm slightly worried about being mocked with the sounds of barnyard animals.

It's a bit of a challenge trying to find passport control in this airport. There are many signs that clearly point out where it is, however, all we can find is an empty counter that's got a gate across the exit. After a bit of searching, we find another passport control where we are both nonchalantly waved through by an apathetic guard without much more than a glance at the covers of our passports. Isn't my passport supposed to get stamped? Ah, this must be that special "laissez faire" attitude I've heard about.

This picture of the opera was taken the day after we arrived. We were accosted by a man who wanted to take our picture (for a small fee, of course) who thought that I was Italian because of how I sounded when I spoke French. At least I'm not getting quacked at. Yet.

There's a bus that goes right from the airport to metro Opéra, which is about a 10 minute walk from out hotel. The opera itself is a massive building, with glittering gold statues where several roads converge and crisscross. It's mayhem getting from corner to corner, dodging traffic and the dozens of people erupting from the metro below. We wheel our luggage to the hotel and set out to find somewhere to eat. It's the evening, so there's not much we can do right now except eat and take a walk around our arondissement.

It's a relatively short walk to the Louvre, so we've decided to take a look at the museum before we eat. The Louvre is quite stunning at night- the massive glass pyramid in the centre is brightly illuminated, as is the arch that faces the museum. The Louvre is an enormous structure that surrounds you on all sides when you're standing at its entrance. A colleague told me that she had to walk almost a mile to get from one end to another to see a particular painting, and I can see that she wasn't exaggerating.

Facing away from the museum, we can see the Eiffel tower and a large ferris wheel (because every major European city had to have a wheel with the word "millennium" in it this year) by Place de la Concorde. It's very surreal to see something like the Eiffel tower for the first time in person. After seeing it a million times in films, television, and photographs, it's strange to actually see it right in front of you. It's kind of like taking a stroll down the street and suddenly bumping into the woman who posed for the Mona Lisa.

After much menu reading and walking about, we settled on a place called Café Nemo for supper. With the exception of a small incompatible language mishap (and a nice but dim waiter), the meal was very good. I had ravioli stuffed with seafood in a very buttery sauce, and Tony had leg of lamb (now we know what a "gigot" is). A gorgeous tiramisu for dessert, more waiter-related mishaps, and back to our hotel for the night. We're staying at the Hotel Baudelaire Opéra, deriving its name from the fact that Baudelaire stayed there at one time. It's run by a very friendly woman who is perfectly bilingual and overall, it's quite a nice little hotel. We've got a comfy bed and Tony is happy that he can watch his Sky news.

Friday, December 29/00

Our first full day in Paris and we've decided to begin with the Musée d'Orsay. We walked from our hotel to the museum, stopping to take more pictures of the Louvre and some shots from the bridge as we cross the Seine.

A much better picture than what my camera took. Luckily, Tony's camera is far less sensitive to low light.

This was fabulous to see by daylight (such as it is). The colours on this arch are quite striking.

A view from one of the bridges as we crossed the Seine. A bit of a murky picture from my grumpy camera, but it gives you an idea of the architecture around the river's banks.

Our lunch stop is at a brasserie, which unfortunately, I have completely forgotten the name of. Our waiter seemed less than thrilled with serving us at first, but later kept coming back to chit chat with us. At one point, he came over holding a little Canadian flag pin and I think that he's indicating that it's fallen off my bag or something similar. I tell him that the pin's not mine, but he asks "Do you not recognise this?". "Erm, yes, it's the Canadian flag", I say (this conversation is in French, which makes me wonder if I've somehow missed something he's said). "Aren't you Quebecoise?" he says, still holding up the pin. Now I realise that he's figured out that I'm from Quebec by my accent and he's holding up the pin just to show me the flag. It's moments like this that used to make me sweat in Quebec. That feeling of dread where you thought you understood the conversation but suddenly you have no clue what the other person's on about. Still, it was nice to know that I speak French well enough that Parisians think I'm from Quebec and that this waiter had to ask if I'm Francophone (native French speaking) or Anglophone (native English speaking). Anyway, so back to lunch- I had a smoked salmon sandwich and a cream of vegetable soup, and Tony got a croque monsieur (a grilled ham and cheese sandwich of sorts) after getting the wrong sandwich first. We're starting to think that waiter mishaps are going to be a frequent occurrence here.

The d'Orsay picks up where the Louvre stops- at the Impressionist and post-Impressionist period. The building the museum is housed in was once a train station, which becomes apparent when you view it from the second floor.

After its demise as a train station, it was used for theatrical plays and film sets. Bit o' trivia: Orson Wells shot "Kafka" here, filling the corridors with filing cabinets to create an oppressive office setting. It was eventually turned into an art museum, which I think works quite well. The openness and light in the corridors helps relieve the claustrophobic and cluttered atmosphere that other galleries can have.

One end of the museum is covered by a frosted glass wall where you can see the blurred silhouettes of people walking behind. If you happen to get the Rough Guide to Paris, you'll see that this view appears on the cover (and oddly enough, the clock on the cover of the book is only 10 minutes behind the clock in this picture).

This Seurat painting was one of my favourites.

I spotted a Chinese restaurant the night before that looked good, so we're off to try it tonight. Things start to get a bit surreal when you're speaking to people in your second language that is probably their third or fourth language. The evening is a mixture of languages ("Franglaise" as we used to call it in Quebec), but the service and food is excellent. Sweet and sour pork for Tony and chicken with almonds for me. Yummy!

Saturday, December 30/00

It's left bank day today, and I'm thrilled to bits. This is the part of the city where the literary greats hung out in, such as Joyce, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. It's a funky "arty" section of Paris that still attracts literary and intellectual types to this day. Our first stop is a little bit past the left bank at the Panthéon. The Panthéon was originally a church, transformed by the Revolution into mausoleum for people like Voltaire and Zola. This was back in the days when your fans and loved ones would pour into the streets upon your death, write lines from your books on banners and wave them around, and carry your coffin to your swanky burial place like the Panthéon. Alternatively, you'd get dug up years later and relocated from your original cemetery to get a 5-star room at the Panthéon.

The tomb of Victor Hugo.

Pierre and Marie Curie.

The Panthéon also contains a working model of Foucault's pendulum. That's right, it's more than just a book by Umberto Eco. Foucault's pendulum experiment was conducted in the Panthéon in 1851, demonstrating the rotation of the earth. The pendulum appears to rotate over a 24 hour period, when in fact, it's the earth that rotates beneath it. You can see the platform of the pendulum on the floor in the middle of the picture, while the pendulum itself is suspended from the ceiling. That tiny glint of gold in the centre of the platform is the pendulum.

Shakespeare and Co. is an incredibly cramped bookshop just oozing with books from every direction. There's an upper level accessible by a very narrow and steep staircase that I didn't dare attempt to climb. I've decided to buy a new copy of James Joyce's Ulysses to replace my dog-eared copy from my university days. The shop is being run by an older man who previously smashed into me with a box of books and is now ignoring me. Finally, I manage to get his attention, and he seems perplexed as to why there's a person standing in front of him holding a book, even though he's sitting in front of a cash register. I pay far too much for a book I already own, but this one's stamped by the very place that first published the book back in 1922. There's supposed to be a Canadian bookshop in the area, but we can't find the street on our map. I reluctantly go back to the grumpy man at Shakespeare and Co. and ask for directions to the Abbey Bookshop. After several more attempts to get his attention, he keeps his eyes on his book and says "You must be Canadian. First left, second right". Okey dokey.

It ends up that the shop is actually on the third right, but we manage to find it eventually. It's a small shop filled with Canadian books and several Quebec publications. I'm not too enthusiastic about coming all the way to Paris to buy a Canadian book at triple the cost, so I leave empty handed. I'm disappointed- I half expected to be greeted by a small group of cheerful Canadians, all pleased as punch that a real live Canadian has come all the way to Paris to visit their bookshop. Oh, the stories we'd share! The shop is run by a woman who's on the pavement talking to friends, and I don't think she even said hello. She tells us that they were broken into that morning as we leave, so maybe the mood is less jovial today because of that.

I've had a craving for Greek food for the past few days, and I've spotted several places in this area to eat. We find one that's not jam packed, and have a cheap, but not overly exciting meal. I have the "poulet au four" which ends up being a baked chicken leg, with rice and baked potato. Tony gets souvlaki with the same rice and baked potato. The service is excruciatingly slow and it takes ages to get our bill. We've discovered that unlike at home and North America, you don't automatically get the bill delivered to your table when you're done eating. You have to hunt down your waiter and get his attention, then ask for your bill. No small feat. I've heard about the famous Parisian 2 hour lunch, but I realise that they're not actually eating- they're waiting for their bill. At a later point, Tony reads in his Blue Guide to Paris that this area where we're eating is fondly referred to as "Bacteria Alley". Some restaurants keep their meat and seafood on display in the front window and basically most of these places are tourist traps. Well, NOW you tell us. Needless to say, we survive eating in Bacteria Alley with no adverse effects.

Our next stop is at Notre Dame cathedral. It's an impressive, gorgeous church with the sunlight streaming through the stained glass and rose windows. No sign of the hunchback, though.

We make our way back across the river and I notice a bunch of people standing on top of a department store. It's called Samaritan and for no cost, you can take the lift to the roof of the building for a good view of the city. As long as you don't mind waiting in queue for a lift you can fit into and make sure you don't bash your head at the top of the stairs before you reach the roof, it's well worth the trip. Here are two pictures that Tony took from the top of the store.

We head back to our hotel to drop our things off and decide to try the restaurant across from the hotel called Souris Verte (Green Mouse). We're the first ones in, but it quickly fills with locals. I had a very nice salmon fettucine and Tony had the roast lamb. Dessert was a big plate of white and dark chocolate cake that was excellent.

Time to walk off that cake, and we head for Place Vendome. This reminds me of my Montreal home, having lived right by Vendome metro. Place Vendome, however, is slightly more chic than a Montreal metro station. It's a square lined with very posh shops like Chanel and Cartier. It's also home to the Ritz hotel where princess Diana spent her last night. We look though windows at things like £25,000 bracelets (which I inform Tony he can feel free to purchase for me) and other assorted fashions. This square is very pretty at night- the shops are lined with evergreen boughs with sparkly Christmas lights. I really like it here because it's so much quieter in the city at night. After spending a couple of days in queues and being squished in with hundreds of other tourists, this is a welcome break.

The doors of various designers line the square around Place Vendome. I'm dwarfed by the massive Chanel door, glistening with Christmas lights. We walk past the posh shops and hotels, emerging out into Place de la Concorde. Just as we start walking towards it, a light show erupts- it's a rehearsal for the light show that will take place tomorrow night at the stroke of midnight. A small crowd gathers making various "oooh" and "ahhhh" noises. This is definitely where we want to be tomorrow night.

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