Paris, Part One: Arrival

Instead of getting each other useless junk that we might never use, Peter and I decided that we’d have a joint Christmas present of a short holiday in Paris. Neither of us had ever been there, it’s loaded to the brim with cool places to see, and Peter wanted to break out his school-learned French.

I was very excited to go on this short break as I had just finished up my tech writing contract and had a week off before starting my new job. It felt like my last taste of freedom before becoming a salaried, holiday-hording regular worker. I was also excited because it was PARIS and I was going to try to be fashionable. Or at least I had bought a couple of cute outfits just for the trip.

We arrived in Paris in the afternoon and found our way to the baggage claim area easily. Charles de Gaulle airport is much better to arrive into than to depart from. When you arrive there, you just follow the crowd and gape at how absolutely dated it looks. I’m sure it was all super-futuristic in 1970 but now it looks like it was built by the set designers of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

On the advice of a friend, we took the Roissybus to the Opera House because that’s supposed to be a cheap, convenient way to travel, especially if you’re staying in that general area. Unfortunately, there had been an accident between the airport and the Opera House and the bus ride was interminable. The bus had a ticker that would tell your destination and how much longer it was going to take to get there. A nifty idea but it gets completely disheartening when you start to see the time increase instead of decrease. We felt trapped in a nightmare as we watched the mocking little ticker, for an entire half-hour, tell us that we were 22 minutes from the Opera House.

We finally arrived at the Opera House, found a tourist office, and got directions to our hotel. We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the hotel, but after the plane and the bus, it felt good. The air was cold and crisp. The buildings were huge, impressive, and very French-looking. After the luggage disaster of Berlin (in which I put a higher premium on packing efficiency than on practical carrying), I’d learned my lesson and we each had a large wheeled bag, which allowed us to zip easily along without the lugging, cursing, and whinging that occurred in Berlin.

At one point in the walk, we were crossing a street. It was beginning to get dark and when I looked up the street, I could see the Sacre Couer in the distance. Lit up, it looked like a ghost church floating above the city. It was almost mirage-like. That moment would become one of my favourite Paris memories.

Our hotel was in a little cul de sac called the Cite Berger, which is lined with at least 8 hotels. You get into the cul de sac through an arched gateway and although the street is narrow, cars can go through. I’d booked the hotel on Priceline and then looked it up on TripAdvisor, which allows people to post reviews for hotels.

Based on the reviews, we were expecting a basic budget hotel in an area that you would find either grotty or charming depending on your assumptions and biases. Yeah, the archway was a little dark and graffiti’d but it really wasn’t that bad. The lift was tiny but our room was only on the first floor (second floor really). Our room was small, but we’d expected that. The bathroom was really, really small, but still held a toilet, full bath, and sink. It was basic accommodation at a reasonable price and we came to Paris to see Paris, not to sit in our hotel room.

After dumping our bags, we set off to find this photography museum whose name escapes me. Wednesday nights are free and Peter’s a photographer, so this seemed to be a good idea. Oh, this reminds me, Peter’s camera was banned from this trip. I know, amen’t I a meanie? This trip was about us, about having a fun adventure and relaxing. If the camera came, then the trip would be about photography, talking about parallax distortion and density filters, and planning everything around sunset and sunrise.

So yes, we set off to find this museum, which after about an hour of walking, including a pit stop to buy Peter a nice winter overcoat (for the bargain basement price of 50 euro and a dashing hat for 20 euro), we found the museum. I’m glad it was free because it was a bit too bleeding-arty-edge for our tastes. We spent a minimal amount of time in the museum, then got out of there.

We decided to walk along the Seine with the intention of walking to the Eiffel Tower. It was cold but invigorating and we walked quite a distance before realizing we were still very far from the tower. As part of my fashion crusade, I was wearing a pair of Clarke’s slip-ons, which while comfortable and fashionable were not really made for walking miles and miles. My feet hurt something awful and I don’t think Peter’s were doing that well either.

We could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance and kept thinking it we would be there soon. When we pulled out the map, we were sorely disappointed. Paris is huge – way bigger than I really thought it was. I don’t know why I had the impression that it was somehow compact. It’s not. We decided to leave it for the night, hop on the Metro and find a place to have dinner near our hotel

I left the ticket purchase and Metro navigation in Peter’s capable hands. Our first experience on the Metro was in a station that also does suburban rail. I was half-convinced that we’d hop on the train and end up in Paris’ version of Wheaton, Illinois, but Peter’s an able navigator and he got us on the right train. Our Lonely Planet book recommended the Chartier Restaurant, which happened to be just across the street from our hotel. It was cheap, recommended, and well-located so that’s where we ate.

The place is described as a Paris institution and there’s a timelessness about it. The older waiters, the bored cashier, the smoking, the high ceilings – you could be dining there anytime in the last 100 years and it would be basically the same. It’s the sort of place where, of necessity, you share a table with strangers and the etiquette seems to be to studiously ignore the other party. We shared a table with some 30-something French women, one of whom spent part of the dinner yapping on her cell phone.

For my main course, I had an Alsace dish of sausages and sauerkraut. It was delicious, but sort of difficult to eat. The sausages were quite juicy – very tasty but a hazard to others. At one point, I cut into the sausage and released a stream of juice, which I’m pretty sure hit the woman next to me. I was mortified, but she appeared to either not notice or to be ignoring me with such ferocity that even if she had noticed, she couldn’t say anything.

The other mortifying moment for me was when I had to use the toilet. I have a special gift, an ability to find a bathroom in any public establishment. I got up from the table, followed by bathroom-senses to the front of the restaurant, edged to the right and found what seemed to be the entrance to the bathrooms. But all I could see was the outer door, which was unmarked. The first person to come out was a man and I glimpsed an inner door, which was opened to reveal a line of urinals.

I looked around, trying to see if the Ladies’ Room was somewhere else, but this seemed to be the only bathroom. In the five minutes I stood there, at least 4 guys came out of the bathroom, but no women. I stopped a waiter and asked him where the toilet was and he looked at me with the sort of pity mixed with contempt that made me want to shrivel up and blow away. He pointed to the very door I’d been eyeing and then he scurried away. When I went into the outer door, all became clear as the door to the Ladies’ Room was immediately behind it although it really did feel like you were going into the Men’s Room in order to get to the Ladies’ Room. (I soon got used to this though as it seems like this is how it is in a lot of Parisian establishments.)

We left the restaurant full and happy, stumbling across the street to our hotel for a well-earned rest.

Paris, Part Two: The Magic Museum Pass

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I actually slept all the way through the night. I woke up around 8 am feeling well-rested and ready to take on the world. I knew Peter wouldn’t feel that way for at least another two or three hours, so I left him to it and set off on my own.

First, a word about fashion. In short, fashion went right out the door in favour of comfort. I’d planned to not really wear jeans, but I couldn’t wear my runners with my black trousers. Plus, wearing the black trousers with most of my blouses made me look like someone’s grandmother. I had to concede pretty early on that my clothes are just not that fashionable in general, with the exception of my cute little outfits. (More on this later.)

I don’t really speak any French. I know enough to ask for directions, but not enough to be able to follow those directions. The theme of my morning excursion was “I did it myself – in French!” I went to the Metro station and bought two 3-day museum passes. I went to a coffee shop and bought a cookie and an espresso. (Forget about regular filter coffee in Paris – you will drink espresso and you will like it because you will be wired for days on end.) I went into a store and bought 24 postcards. All by myself. All in French.

I stayed in the vicinity of our hotel and returned to get Peter so we could get on with our big adventure of a day. Since we’d had so much fun in Berlin buying our breakfast from a market, we decided to go to a Parisian market. We caught the Metro to the Bastille and were stopped by ticket inspectors. Peter found his ticket easily, but I had a couple of tickets from the night before in my pocket.

I kept pulling out tickets and the inspector kept looking at them carefully and shaking his head. He put one into a little validator machine and it came up invalid. I was starting to get nervous. He was talking to me in French. I had heard all about French Metro inspectors and knew I was going to be in trouble if I couldn’t produce a valid ticket. Peter was about 10 feet away, looking at me the way you’d look at someone whom you thought might be drowning, but you weren’t really sure they were in trouble and you weren’t confident enough in your swimming skills to know that you could save them if there were. Finally, after nearly emptying my pockets and turning them inside out, I found the right ticket and was let through.

The market was great – several long blocks of vendors selling everything from sea urchins to socks. What wasn’t so great was the weather. In my zeal to have a Berlin-like market experience, I’d conveniently forgotten that we went to Berlin in July and we were in Paris in January. It was cold (-1 C or about 29 F) and a bit windy. We ended up buying a scarf each and I got a pair of gloves. My scarf – a nice blue pashmina – didn’t leave my neck the whole time we were in Paris.

We found a café near the market and settled in for lunch. It was a nice enough place and the food was good. I had a delicious goat’s cheese sandwich. Peter had ordered the hamburger but the waiter “I’ve made a big mistake, I’ve ordered you rib eye steak” but Peter found it quite delicious so the mistake was forgiven. (We were not so amused to get charged for the rib eye steak, which was about 3 euro more expensive, but we didn’t complain about it. Peter did eat it and like it after all.)

After lunch, we went to Notre Dame, which Peter loved and I found a bit gloomy and depressing. The inside is enormous, cavernous and although it looks big from the outside, I don’t think anything prepares you for the inside. In addition to the large, traditional church area and alter, the sides and back are lines with small chapels and prayer areas. The choir loft is dominated by an enormous pipe organ. The ceilings are unreachably high. But I found it dark and foreboding. Of course, one girl’s dark and foreboding is another man’s magnificent and amazing.

Our museum passes got us into the top part of the church for free. We walked up a spiral stone staircase to the gift shop, where we waited to be allowed up to the top. After we’d served our time in the shop, we were allowed to walk up more spiral stone stairs until we reached the balcony where all the gargoyles sit. The view was amazing and I could have spent all day up there. (Although you wouldn’t want to be extraordinarily fat since the little archways into the various balcony sections are incredibly narrow.)

We also went into the bell tower and I now want to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (Or at least watch the Disney movie.) The entire supporting structure inside the bell tower is wooden and you can definitely appreciate the “No Smoking” sign. The bell is enormous and I’d love to see it swing, although it looks like they just use a striker on the side of it now.

After Notre Dame, we went to the crypts, which I’d unfortunately confused with the catacombs. Unless you’re really into archeology, the crypt is only interesting for about 5 minutes. Luckily, it was free with our magic museum pass, so we spent about 15 minutes there and then decamped for a café, where we enjoyed crepes and coffee. One thing that was difficult to get used to in Paris – the smoking indoors. The smoking ban in workplaces has been in effect in Dublin for nearly 2 years now and it’s completely spoilt us. We’re just not used to breathing other people’s smoke and going home smelling like smoke. To be fair, the ventilation in the Parisian cafes is hands-down better than that of Dublin pubs, but it’s still a shock to see someone light up indoors.

Our next point of interest was St. Chapelle, a chapel that was built to house the Crown of Thorns and other spoils from the crusades. To get into the church, we had to queue and go through a metal detector because the church is on the grounds of the Courts of Justice or some similarly official sounding French court system. The ground floor of the church is dark, dank and disappointing, probably because the stained glass windows were removed when the floor was used as a storage room for the courts. At first, we thought this was all there was and were feeling distinctly disappointed before we spotted the staircases to the upper floor.

The stained glass windows on the upper floor are outstanding. The information sheet explained that the windows tell the stories from the Bible and that each window is like its own comic strip. The detail in the windows is exquisite and you could easily spend hours getting cricks in your neck, examining each panel. Entry to the St. Chapelle also entitles you to see the Concierge, although we got into both for free because of…all together now…the magic museum pass.

The Concierge was used as a prison back in the French Revolution and we got to see the cell where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution. The prison was interesting in that how you were incarcerated depended on your station in life. If you were poor, you were going to be sharing with lots of other people and sleeping on straw. If you were wealthy, you could buy your way up into private accommodations with a bed and a writing desk.

After the Concierge, we went to our last tourist stop of the day: the Louvre. (And if you’re already thinking to yourself that we got in free because of the magic museum pass, you’re absolutely correct.) We arrived via the Metro so we didn’t get to really see the famous pyramid until we left the museum.

Unless you’re a scholar of Renaissance art, there’s only one reason for going to the Louvre. Sure, it’s a fantastic museum, stocked to the gills with 35,000 works of art and it is, in and of itself, a work of art. But really, everyone who walks through those doors has one thing in mind. Everyone wants to see this lady. The museum is designed to handle this overwhelming desire. Just about every sign in the place has a little picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow pointing in her direction.

We followed the arrows like everyone else and ended up in front of her. They’ve built what looks like a little altar to keep people back and, since that’s apparently not enough, they also use those ugly bank-queue tensa-barriers to rope the area off. Everyone who sees the Mona Lisa reports that she’s much smaller than they thought. I was expecting something on the size of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” which I always thought was going to be the size of an entire wall and it’s not that much bigger than a sheet of paper. Given my expectations of “Starry Night,” I went into the Louvre half-expecting the Mona Lisa to be the size of a post card.

She’s not. She’s respectably sized. Not as big as some, not as small as others. You see, there’s a lot of hype over the Mona Lisa and at the end of our visit, we had to conclude that she’s famous just for being famous. Sort of like being the Kerry Katona of the Renaissance. Yes, it’s a great painting done by one of art’s great Masters, but it’s not the be-all end-all of portraiture. The Mona Lisa has had centuries of great PR and that’s why everyone flocks to see her. You go out of a sense of responsibility, a sense that if you go to Paris and don’t see her, you’ve somehow missed out. In the end, you get what you’ve paid for – you get to tick off a must-do on your great list of must-dos and then you go on to the next thing.

For us, the next thing was back to the hotel for a nap. Or at least a nap for Peter. I wandered around the area near our hotel and stopped into a café for an espresso. We had dinner at a Japanese place where Peter had reasonably priced sushi that later didn’t agree with him so well.

Paris, Part Three: Moving On Up

I was up early, as in my wont, and I got dressed and slipped out of the hotel room without waking Peter. I’d decided to go to an indoor market, one that Lonely Planet listed as reminiscent of a North African bazaar. OK, maybe they didn’t exactly use those words, but that’s what I was expecting.

After a couple of mistakes on the Metro, I found my way to the right neighbourhood. I found the Metro more difficult to use than the trains in Berlin. For one thing, the colour-coding is hard to read. When you look at a transport map and find yourself saying things like “we have to take the mauve line to the pink line,” you know it’s all gone a bit mad.

Back to the market, which was a disappointment after my expectations. You see, for completely inexplicable reasons, I long to go to Morocco, particularly to go to a bazaar.
I probably wouldn’t have the balls to bargain, but I really just want to experience it all – the smell of the spices, the noise of the crowds, the jostling for position. When I walked into this market and found myself standing next to a stall selling beer, I knew I was going to be disappointed. It was just a large, indoor market, just a smaller, more square version of the West Side Market in Cleveland.

After the market, I walked around for awhile and then took the Metro back to near our hotel, which was in an area where there were a lot of Jewish bakeries. I went to a supermarket to buy butter, cheese and drinks. All I had on me was a 50 euro note and you’d have thought I’d handed the cashier a 5,000 euro note. After a lot of admonishing, eye-rolling, and sighing, she heaved herself out of her seat and went over to another cashier. There was more eye-rolling and sighing with a bit of finger-pointing thrown in for good measure before I got my change. Then I went to a Jewish bakery and bought some rolls and éclairs.

Peter and I had breakfast in our hotel room and then packed up. His sister is a member of the Hilton Rewards Club and had very generously given us 2 nights at the Hilton, which is conveniently located right next to the Eiffel Tower. We made our way to the Hilton, but our room wasn’t ready yet, so we left our bags and went to the tower.

The Eiffel Tower is, of course, the iconic image of Paris. You know it’s going to be there. You expect it to be big. But nothing really prepares you for how majestic it is – the metalwork, the graceful lines, the long stretch into the sky. It’s elegant and inexplicably delicate in a way that’s nearly impossible to describe. Even though you know what it looks like, you still can’t help feeling a bit awestruck when you finally see it up close.

We bought tickets and commenced our stair-climbing adventure. Up and up and up we climbed to the first stage, where you can find a post office, a café, and the toilets. You can also find, in winter, a small ice skating rink. Yes, you can ice skate up in the Eiffel Tower. I wasted no time trading in my runners for a pair of skates (amazingly enough, this amenity is also free) and taking to the ice. I had a great time teetering around in small circles, enjoying the view and the very idea of what I was doing.

One of the informative signs on the way up to the second stage informs you that the first skating rink was built on the tower in 1969 and the first individual to try out the rink was a bear from the Moscow circus. I’ve skated on the ice of greats, that’s for sure. After my skating fun, we clambered up the steps to stage 2. We appreciated the views and then tried to get to the very top and learned that it was closed for repairs. I sort of expected this, since I’d seen a sign in the ticket window and I knew the price we paid (3.70 euro) was way too cheap to get all the way to the top. Nevertheless, we were both pretty disappointed.

After a quick stop back at the hotel (nice big room, balcony with a view of the tower), we had lunch at a café and then went to the Musee d’Orsay. Ice skating on the Eiffel Tower is my favourite part of our trip, but the Musee d’Orsay is easily a very close second. As per usual, our magic museum pass got us in the door for free and we dumped our coats and bag in the coat check.

The museum is housed in a converted railway station and it retains the open-air feeling of the station along with the stately gigantic railway clocks. I love Impressionist art and was looking forward to seeing some of my favourites. I was taken with the Degas collection, particularly the ballerinas. The real star of the show for me was the room with the Van Gogh paintings. I absolutely fell in love with The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, View from the Chevet .

Peter was quite taken with the gallery of Naturalists, particularly The Excommunication of Robert the Pious by Jean Paul Laurens. The online version doesn’t do the painting justice since you can’t really see the “oh shit, what have I done?” expression on Robert’s face. The painting tells a great story and you could look at it for hours, appreciating the various details.

Our plan for dinner was to go to a restaurant Peter’s father had recommended, Chez Frances, which was a favourite of James Joyce. We made reservations and learned that they had a “no jeans” dress code. Fair enough, I’d packed Peter’s sports coat, dress shirt, dress shoes, and dress slacks because I wanted to get dressed up go to the cabaret. (As a side note, I finally decided that I’d wanted to go the cabaret for the wrong reasons and that we’d end up spending a bomb for a disappointment. At root, I wanted to go to 1920’s France and was naively hoping the cabaret would provide a time machine into the Paris of the garishly gas-lamp-lit Toulouse-Lautrec cabaret paintings.)

I am going to gloss over a bit of a disagreement that we had over the dinner plans and just say that it very nearly ended in tears. Basically, I am a bitch when my blood sugar drops and it happens on a far too frequent occasion because I’m continually dieting. (I think this is proberly a topic for my other blog.) The trouble is that I seldom am able to realise that A.) my blood sugar level has dropped and B.) I’m being a bitch. It is to Peter’s credit that he did not just drop-kick me into the Seine. We talked it out, worked it out, and I went out to get a candy bar and some fresh air to defuse the situation.

In the end, it was a moot point because I’d inexplicably packed only Peter’s dress shoes and none of his other dress clothes. I don’t know how this happened but I felt horrible. In the end, we made plans to buy him some trousers the next day, changed our reservation at Chez Frances and had our dinner at a Moroccan-Mediterranean place. As a bit of poetic justice, the tangine I had gave me bloat-y tum. Serves me right.

Paris, Part Four: Every Last Drop of Fun

I woke up on a mission to squeeze every last drop of holiday goodness from our short break. A few hours later, Peter woke up with the same determination. The problem was that our definitions of holiday goodness are radically different. For me, it means go to loads of museums, see everything, suck dry the wealth of opportunities. To Peter, it means primarily relax, see interesting things if they are there to be seen but basically chill and enjoy not having any responsibilities. You can see the conflict coming a mile away, can’t you? No, it really wasn’t bad, it’s just one of those things we have to recognize about each other and then work around.

Our first stop in the morning was the Sacre Couer, the church that first took my breath away when I glimpsed it in the distance on our first day in Paris. I’d also been looking forward to visiting Montmarte, given its artistic history. So it was with high expectations that I joined Peter on the Metro. If there’s one lesson I need to learn, it’s that high expectations are a bad thing. If there’s another lesson I need to learn, it’s that I don’t have now nor will I ever have a time machine and I need to visit places for what they are now, not what they were 100 years ago. (Yes, I know these are simple lessons. I am just a slow learner.)

The walk up to the Sacre Couer was nice, even though the day was chilly and grey. The only bad thing about the walk were these really aggressive guys trying to sell friendship bracelets. They’d clamp onto your arm and just not let go. I had to really yell “No” at the guy, which made Peter proud of me since I have a tendency to be a bit timid sometimes in confrontational situations. (That’s only because I don’t want to be rude, but this guy was touching me and I am very protective of my personal space so I had no problem being loud and rude.)

The inside of the church was nice although I think I was suffering from church fatigue. (I now realise that I feel about churches the same way Peter feels about castles – after you’ve seen one or two, they are all pretty much the same.) I was also suffering from gotta-pee-it is, which I was able to cure at a public convenience near the church. We walked down from the church and through part of Montmarte, on the look out for a creperie and a place to buy Peter trousers. We struck out on both counts and were disappointed by the parts of Montmarte that we saw, which were a little rough and uninteresting.

Back on the Metro with a new plan – to visit the Bon Marche department store to buy slacks for Peter. We were monitoring my blood sugar to make sure I wasn’t going to go all festering-hag on Peter and I conceded that I probably needed a candy bar or something to keep me stable until lunch.

The Bon Marche was something of a nightmare – big, sprawling, expensive, and its cafes and eating establishments didn’t have a single item priced under 5 euro. (At least that’s what it seemed like to me.) We ended up wandering around for awhile and then giving it up for a bad job. We had lunch at a nearby café and then went to the Arc de Triomphe. I was impressed with its size because I expected it to be as big as the Brandenburg Gate, but it’s much bigger than that. We used our magic museum pass to go inside and up to the top, where we had great views of Paris. I can see why people enjoy the walk from/to the Arc to/from the Louvre, but it was way too cold and blustery for us to attempt it.

I used the bathroom on the way out and was dismayed to find that one stall was entirely out of order and the other was entirely out of toilet paper. Not a good state of affairs. On the way out, I told one ticket-taker guy, who didn’t understand me and just kept giving me directions to the bathroom. I found another ticket-taker, a woman, whose English seemed a lot better than the guy’s. I told her that the bathroom was out of toilet paper and she shrugged dismissively. I said to her “But the other toilet is broken, so it’s very bad up there, with the other toilet out of paper.” She shrugged again and said “That is not my job.” Fair enough. That was me told, I guess.

Peter was tired and a bit grumpy after several days of forced-marching to view sights and I still wanted to get some more mileage out of the magic museum pass. He gave up the quest for a pair of trousers and went back to the room to relax. I went on the Les Egouts de Paris, more commonly known as the Paris Sewer Tour.

No I did not pay any money to get into this place. I used the magic museum pass. Yes, it sounds gross but it also sounds like somewhere you shouldn’t be allowed to go, so of course I wanted to go. I ended up having some mixed feelings about it. In a classic case of bad timing, I got caught behind a huge group of French people. They were getting a tour from the sewer worker, all in French. Through gestures, an odd word or two, and the signs on the wall, I had a faint clue of what he was saying. The group was so large that they choked off access to the rest of the tour and it was, at that point, unclear to me if you were allowed to wander the tour area unaccompanied, so I stayed at the back of the group like a good kid.

After the overall-wearing workman had finished his speaking bit, a guy from the tour stepped up and started to talk. A lot. In a very animated fashion. Everyone on the tour was rapt, listening intently to this guy who bore more than a passing resemblance to Santa Claus. The guy next to me was nodding in agreement so rapidly, I was afraid his head might fall off. I stood on my tip toes to get a better look at Santa and realised he was holding sheaves and sheaves of paper. Possibly an entire ream. And he looked like he could probably read and lecture from these pages for weeks.

When the group moved on to the next stop, I managed to worm my way into the middle of the group, but I was still trapped for another round of lecturing. The only thing I could guess was that this guy was some sort of Victor Hugo expert and was talking about the part the sewers played in Les Miserable. I’m not basing this guess on very much. I think I heard him say “Hugo” but he could have said any number of words.

It felt like months that I was trapped in the sewer with these people. The idea of standing near thousands of tonnes of untreated waste was fantastic in the abstract. In the concrete, it was getting old very fast. The only thing more boring than listening to someone talk in excruciating detail about sewers is listening to someone use a foreign language you don’t understand to talk in excruciating detail about sewers. On the move to the next stop, I broke out my elbows and very rudely jostled myself to the front of the pack and then got the gosh-heck out of dodge as quickly as I could. I didn’t feel a damn bit bad about it either.

I hopped on the Metro to try to go to the Picasso Museum. The Metro was jammed, my feet hurt, and I was starting to get cranky. When I realised that I’d have a fair hike to the Picasso Museum, I decided it was time to find a Plan B. I jumped off the Metro at the next stop, walked around a bit, and ended up in a creperie that had its own resident cat. I had great fun eating my crepe, writing post cards, and watching the cat scramble up its big scratching post/climbing tree.

When I joined Peter at the hotel, he was relieved to learn that he’d made the right choice in skipping the sewer tour. I’d planned for dinner to wear one of my little outfits, a cute little skirt with a blouse and knee-high boots, but forces conspired against me. (I got a run in my nylons and it was just too damn cold to go traipsing around in a short skirt. Not only am I unfashionable, I am also turning into an old sissy.) We ended up going to L’Epi D’Or, which was interesting.

The place is small, verging on tiny really. To get to my seat against the wall, the waiter had to pull the entire table out. It also has an amazing patina of oldness. In a time where every new restaurant has some gimmick to make it stand out (like having antique crap everywhere or trying to look old when it’s not), L’Epi D’Or is the genuine article. In fact, I think they blew a fuse when we were there because the lights all went out for about a minute. (They also went out later in the night, but that’s because it was another diner’s birthday and there was singing and a cake with sparklers.) We enjoyed the whole experience although we are looking forward to going back and finally trying Chez Frances.

Paris, Part Five: You Could Teach Monkeys To Design Better Airports Than This

Our plane left in the late afternoon, so we had a leisurely morning of packing and then left our bags with the front desk so we could have a final walk around the area. We had brunch at a café and then went to another street market near the hotel. The weather was a bit better, sunny and not quite so cold. The Parisians were all out at the market, buying Sunday dinners, new socks, flowers, and whatever else they might need.

I saw things at this market that just amazed me. Giant pigs’ feet. (I don’t know why I always thought pigs’ feet would be small.) Hearts. Livers. Kidneys. Sea urchins. Enormous crabs. Whole chickens with the necks and heads still attached. A conger eel. A skinned rabbit.

The market was just incredible to me. I mean, do you know anyone who wakes up and thinks “I’d like to drop into the market today and pick up some octopus. And maybe a nice eel. I haven’t had eel in ages.” I can barely bring myself to make stew with pre-sliced meat chunks. I have no capacity to deal with food items that looks like what they used to be.

We decided to skip the Roissybus on the way back to the airport and instead took the train, which got us there in good time and for about the same price as the bus. I hate to end my travelogue of Paris on a bad note, but Charles de Gaulle airport is a nightmare.

We were flying Aer Lingus, which was listed as being Gate 5 for check-in. We made two complete circuits of their check-in hall and couldn’t find a Gate 5. We’d see Gate 3. Gate 6. Gate 4. No Gate 5. We saw a staircase that looked like it would take you down to Gate 5, but it just didn’t look like the kind of place you’d be permitted to go.

Peter stopped an airport worker and was in the process of asking him if he spoke English and was about to ask him where Gate 5 was when the guy took one look at him and said “Aer Lingus, Gate 5 is downstairs.” So, as you can see, they have a lot of pale-faced, ruddy-cheeked, red-haired Irish-looking people asking for Gate 5. It’s obviously a problem – why not put a big sign showing where Gate 5 is?

I guess because that would be too easy. After we were checked into our flight, we began our quest to find lunch. Charles de Gaulle has a satellite system where instead of long hallways with gates, they have circles with gates. The circles are dotted around the airport and you get to them via underground walkways and moving sidewalks. Peter was smart enough to ask the guy checking boarding cards at the entrance to the satellite system if there was food on the other side. The guy advised going to the food court in the main hall, so that’s what we did. (A good thing too, since there was only a coffee concession in the satellite.)

We had McDonald’s because the choices were thin on the ground and I think Peter just really wanted to order a Royale with Cheese. After lunch, we went on quest for bottled water. The shopping choices were pitiful and although we finally found a newsagent, they didn’t sell bottled water. (We ended up buying it from the aforementioned coffee concession.)

We went to our satellite, waited about 15 or 20 minutes to get through security and then I spent another 15 minutes queuing to buy our water. Maybe 30 minutes before our flight, I decided I’d better go to the bathroom. Guess what. Charles de Gaulle Airport was designed by monkeys. There’s no access to the bathrooms on the checked-side of security. In order to go to the bathroom, you have to leave the secure area and then go back through security. You have to leave through the sort of air-lock doors Dublin banks use to thwart robberies.

I was desperate and couldn’t wait until we boarded the plane, so I went through the air-lock doors and then got back into the security line when I was ready. The people in front of me were Irish and were complaining to the people in front of them about how badly designed the airport was. I told them “If you have to go the toilet, you better go now. You can’t get to them on the other side of security. You’ll have to come out and go through queuing for security all over again.” Hey, it was a public service. OK, it wasn’t entirely altruistic, since my little announcement resulted about half the people in front of me leaving the queue.

Our flight back to Dublin was swift and uneventful. We were sitting in the emergency exit row, so Peter had plenty of leg room and I had the illusion of increased survival prospects in the unlikely event of an uncontrolled landing.

In conclusion, we enjoyed Paris and are looking forward to going back in warmer, more hospitable weather.