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.
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.
posted by -Ann at
9:38 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home