Paris 2012 - Day 4

1.00pm - It's time to go home.

It is a beautiful day in Paris, warm and sunny. Just the kind of day I would love to stroll around leisurely taking photos.

David and I did have a nice lie-in until 9.30 and enjoyed one last romantic cuddle before meeting John.

The three of us sat on a bench in the middle of the Boulevard des Batignolles with the coffees and pastries we bought at a corner patisserie before legging it to the Gare du Nord.

No photos? Well, as nice as it was sitting on the bench in the sun it was a bench by a main road in Paris. The Metro and the Gare du Nord didn't inspire my inner photographer either!

I did, however, snap a picture of the strangely formed balloon animal the restraunteur in St Denis gave me as we were leaving for the Stade de France. I carried it all through the rugby match and all the way back to the hotel, just to annoy David!



4.00pm - Almost home. We're back in England on the train home to Birmingham from London. An uneventful "Channel crossing" (well, under the Channel anyway) with overpriced microwaved food and less than desirable coffee.

Travel tips: When going to Paris by Eurostar, take a picnic. We did going over on Friday and had what we wanted at reasonable prices. We should have done the same coming back.

If you need to get to London from Birmingham, and probably from anywhere else in the UK, by train explore your options. The faster Virgin Train was three times more expensive than the slower but no more uncomfortable London Midlands service.

If you visit the Eiffel Tower, go early and pre-book. You'll go straight to the front of the queue like a group of Welsh schoolchildren. It wasn't just the kids, a lot of other people pre-booked and avoided waiting in the first queue to buy tickets.

Don't be afraid to try a restaurant off the beaten path. The guidebooks are just that: guides. You never know when you'll end up in a pizzeria being served champagne and treated like royalty.

Make your own judgments about your trip. I know people who love Paris and people who hate Paris. Each tries to put their case forward but, at the end of the day, every experience is what you make of it. David once had sausages in Paris that were so horrific he will never eat sausage in France again. But yesterday John and I had the sausage served with the couscous and they were delicious.

Free wifi is hard to find in Paris, for those of you who are fellow techno-geeks. If you need to check email, Facebook, Twitter, etc you might check that your hotel provides it so you can at least get your fix while you're away. Saved me a fortune in data charges this trip because I just changed mobile providers and didn't set up my international roaming before I left England.

C'est la vie.



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Paris 2012 - Day 3

1.40pm - Back to David and John's itinerary, which is fine. I like a mixture of looking around on my own and with others.

Right now we're in a cafe/bar 1.1km from the Stade de France. It's not in the most exclusive area, more likely the part of the city where the most recent immigrants have settled. David thinks it's one of the most dangerous areas in the world.

He has obviously never been to South Oak Cliff.

It was more dangerous on the Metro getting here, where a strange little man wearing a Glasgow Rangers shirt and an England football beanie cap (a definite sign of someone up to no good) started to unzip my bag. He didn't get very far. I travel with a bag with an uncooperative zipper!

Whatever area we're in, we had a chance to look around it when John lost his bearings when trying to locate the pub we're in now. I never felt threatened, maybe because I'm wary when out and about anyway, even in Birmingham.

David, bless him, is very protective. He came back to the hotel last night before the rugby matches on telly were over because he was worried about me. He and John had seen a bloke have his iPhone 4s stolen (the same phone I have) and had someone try the old "distract them by pretending you dropped a gold ring" trip. A women tried that to me in the Place de la Concorde on my way back to the hotel, but I ignored her because her acting was highly suspicious!

This morning we started off with a trip up the hill to Sacre-Coeur. Not up all the stairs at the front though. We're all old and unfit.

We still had quite an uphill trek, enough to get the blood pumping and the endorphins going, by approaching from the back, just as the bells began to toll.

No trip inside this time to see whatever is in there. It's a remarkable building, but for a woman who was a historian specialising in the Middle Ages, it's just too modern for my interest, having been begun in 1875 and completed in 1915. I'm more interested in St Denis, which is 331m from where I'm sitting right now!


Instead of going around the cathedral, we found an Irish pub on the corner (middle of the photo with the green awning) and people watched while drinking cafe au lait and eating fresh croissants.

I had to laugh because there were two tellies on in the pub plus music. One was showing Catholic mass, the other the news. At the point in the mass where the priest elevated the host, P!nk came on the radio singing "I'm Not Dead".

My supervising partner Anne said her favourite part of Paris is Montmartre and we had a wander through the artists' market. I remember when I was taking French in high school and enamoured with all things French, I said one day I would buy a painting in Montmartre and I did.


Not from the market itself, where a small oil painting can cost 55€ but from a little shop down the hill where I think artists must take their surplus paintings that they paint on the market but don't sell. After all, you can't have hundreds laying around your stall. I paid 20€.


The England supporters were out in force already, and I won't be surprised if these lads end up on telly because we saw the BBC Sport van parked up around the corner from Sacre-Coeur.


Now more or less back to the present. I can't write in my blog as easily when I'm out with these two, but they're watching rugby on the telly and drinking beer so they're content.

Although David has told John that blogging is one of the world's great inventions for keeping women quiet. How rude.

7.30pm - What an afternoon!

We went next door to the pub where I was blogging before for a pizza, having seen a few other England supporters go in. It looked like a very rugby-friendly place.


I had stopped to take the picture and when I walked in there were cries of "Oh no! Not another England supporter!"

In this "dangerous area" in Paris, they took us into the back part of the restaurant, brought us free champagne and told us we were going to have the couscous. We never saw a menu.


I don't even know what the name of the restaurant is! But it was so much fun, the food was fantastic and they really looked after us.

Then ... Le Crunch!

I won't give a full match report here. Suffice it to say England beat France 24-22. The atmosphere in the Stade de France was incredible! I've never been to a rugby stadium that loud, not even the Millennium Stadium with the roof shut!

Typical French rugby supporters. More noise when England was kicking than at any other time despite the announcements to respect the kicker!

Now I'm being quiet and blogging again, but I sent David and John out for a beer to keep them quiet!

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Paris 2012 - Day Two

10.30 - The Eiffel Tower. Actually the very long queue for the Eiffel Tower. David and I were getting very close to the front of the queue when 100 Welsh school kids, plus parents, who had pre-booked arrived.

No coffee yet so I'm more Victor Meldrew than Pollyanna this morning.

From a distance, my first thought about the Eiffel Tower was "Is that it?" but, as we got closer, that changed to "Wow".



11.30 - The top of the Eiffel Tower. I almost chickened when we got to the second level, and I almost squeezed all the blood out of David's hand in the lift to the summit (all windows!!!!), but I'm here!


Another thing crossed off my bucket list.

Visitors seem to spend more time in queues than actually seeing anything, but that's the same for most famous tourist attractions so, if you accept that, it's no problem. It would be worse in the summer months, I would imagine. But we did chat to very nice Australian couple while waiting, and that helped pass the time.

I've had a cafe au lait and a pain au chocolat since we've been up here so I feel more Pollyanna now.

You can't help but marvel at the architecture of the Tower, built as a temporary structure in 1889. It feels old but not decrepit. The solidness to it makes a chicken like me feel secure but still has the look of something impressively antique.


Next stop, Notre Dame, I think!

3.45 pm - Sacre bleu! My feet don't half hurt!

I've been doing some sightseeing on my own, which is pretty cool. Sometimes taking things at your own pace and making sure you see everything you want to see is fantastic.

We did go to Notre Dame, only I went into the actual cathedral on my own. David and our friend John, who we do a lot of travelling with when it's a rugby break, sat in a cafe across the road.


I went into Notre Dame on my own (free entry and fast moving queues). It is a beautiful church but very dark compared to other grand churches like Westminster Abbey or even most of those in Rome I visited.

I did like that there was a little chapel to St George, complete with a statue of him slaying the dragon. I thought there might be English football supporters there lighting candles to him but many of them probably aren't religious.


When I met up with David and John, they were just about to pay their tab for two pints. 22€!!! I decided not to join them for a drink.

Now I'm sitting in the cafeteria of the Louvre, having had quite easily found the Mona Lisa but having had a bugger of a time finding the Venus de Milo!


It's amazing how many people are ignoring the rule that you can't use flash photography. Lots of people are more interested in taking pictures of themselves with famous art instead of actually enjoying the art itself.


Once I have rehydrated and the swelling in my feet has eased a bit, I'm going to wander around taking more pictures. I have four hours to get back to the hotel. David and John have gone to the pub to watch the two Six Nations matches being played today. As much as I love rugby, this is my chance to see Paris!

5.40 pm - Back in the hotel with a loaf of pain au main to munch on as I rest my aching feet and try to understand what their saying on the telly. It's a rugby programme so probably "England? We'll beat them with one hand each tied behind our backs!"

Leaving the Louvre, I was reminded just how commercial the world is. I found this inside:


Even better, you know the final scene in the DaVinci Code where Tom Hanks kneels on the inverted pyramid which is supposedly over the tomb of Mary Magdalen? It's a good thing he wasn't downstairs.


Apple could have made a fortune in advertising.

I had a leisurely stroll through Les Jardines des Tuileries, hopped on the Metro and then checked out a supermarket for Spam. Not for me. For my mother. Don't ask.


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Paris 2012 - Day One

I thought it was time to resurrect my seldom used and never completed travel blog. To be honest, I started it before I had the technology to blog directly onto the web day-by-day, and then I forgot about it! So many wasted opportunities!

New leaf now attempting a turnover.

Day One

I've never been to Paris before.

In 1994 (the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Landings) I did a tour of Normandy as part of a history course and in 2006 I visited Strasbourg as part of a law course.

My chance to finally make it to Paris came via rugby. But more of that on Sunday when I actually go to the France v England match.

Summary of trip here: 7.53 Birmingham New Street to London Euston, uneventful. Eurostar from London St Pancras (or St Pancreas, as David insists on calling it) also relatively uneventful.


I did end up sitting next to two dinosaurs on Eurostar. Not in age, in attitude. They were English and kept referring to the other countries in the Six Nations in derogatory terms. Not just that, they made it clear to each other that the wives were home looking after the kids because they know their place.

Oh, they are so under the thumb at home!

Worse yet, there was an empty seat at the table I had to share with them, and they were complaining about the bloke who was supposed to be sitting there. Apparently he had just flown back from Afghanistan that day after several months, and his mother delayed his departure because she wanted to see him.

How very dare she.

Needless to say, I was glad to see the back of those two!

"Landed" safely in Paris this afternoon, long walk through Paris Nord Station to the Metro, walk to the hotel. First impression of Paris: much like other big European cities I've been to but reminds me most of London with slightly different architecture.

We made it to the Arc de Triomphe after a long walk.


Very impressive.

One of the things I wanted to do on this trip is to have a coffee in a cafe on the Champs Élysées.

Very disappointing.


The Champs Élysées was just a busy road with lots of shops. I did, however, have a quick look in the window of Cartier. I would have been happy with anything I saw there!

I'm probably tired and grumpy from a long day. I feel like I'm half Pollyanna, half Victor Meldrew. Perhaps tomorrow, my first full day here with no travelling involved, will seem less disappointing.

It is still a beautiful city.


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