Week 1: Paris (9th
– 15th April 2012)
We left Sydney on Easter Sunday. The nine hour flight from
Sydney to Hong Kong went fast. After a very scary turbulent landing into Hong
Kong, there was only an hour before boarding again for the 12 hour overnight
flight to Paris. This flight went not very fast at all. I don’t know about you,
but I just can’t sleep on planes!
Cathay Pacific offer ‘gluten intolerant’ meals for which I'm very thankful. Unfortunately they don’t have an option to combine this with any other dietary
requirement, in my case vegetarian.
We arrived into Paris bright and (too) early at 6am Easter Monday, a public holiday in Paris. Having
hardly any sleep in the previous 24 hours, we walked around chilly Paris to stay
awake until our hotel check-in at 3pm. We got on the Metro at Nation near our hotel (buying a 7 day
Metro pass), got off at a random centrally located station and walked towards the
Eiffel Tower, taking the back streets, passing quaint bakeries and cafes just
like Paris in the movies!
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| Window of a very popular bakery |
We had a cup of tea and hey why not dessert (gelato and crème caramel)
in a touristy café, although I really don’t remember much of it being so tired. The weather was also very cold. That sort of stingy cold. Visions of warm Paris is springtime disappeared from my head. Once back at the hotel, we slept for 15 hours straight.
On the Tuesday we
started with the area of Montmartre, which overlooks Paris in a northern hillside position. The best views are from the gleaming white Basilica of the Sacre Coeur.
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| The view from Sacre Cour |
Montmartre was
once full of late 19th century very colourful and avant-garde bohemians, artists and
intellectuals, but now seems mostly full of tourists. Still, while
walking around the winding streets, there is a definite detectable echo of the bohemian
lifestyle of the likes of Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec and
flowing green absinthe.
The Moulin Rouge,
which opened in 1889, is still there and being happily photographed by
tourists, myself included. Although you may prefer the quaint Moulin La Galette a few streets away. Moulin means windmill,
a reference to Montmartre’s agricultural past.
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| Present day Moulin Rouge |
Montmartre is also memorable to me for the discovery of a
health food store on the Rue Lepic where I bought a box of delicious buckwheat
chocolate and hazelnut gluten free snacks. I still think of those snacks...
Leaving Montmartre for the Île de la Cité, one of the two islands in the middle of the Seine river which
separates the left and right banks of Paris, we stared at awe at the long lines
of people waiting to enter the Notre Dame
and decided we were content photographing the outside and walking in the
very pretty and relatively peaceful garden at the back with its tulips and tree
blossoms.
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| Those fun little gargoyle guys on the Notre Dame exterior over a doorway |
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| Spring blossoms in the small park behind the Notre Dame |
Ending the day with an attempt to walk to the Arc De Triomphe, we only made it half
way up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
This was due to the rain (I had to stop off at a posh pharmacy to buy band-aids as
my soaking shoes created blisters on my feet), and the distraction of shops along the way. But mostly
because of Ladurée’s macarons. Or is it 'macaroon'? I'm confused on that point.
Ladurée is the home of posh tea and exotic macarons, and has various
shops and cafes around Paris. Their Champs-Élysées café was closed for renovations, but there was a very small pop-up shop set up in front. With a very long
queue snaking inside. We stood in line for half an hour to score brightly coloured macarons, but even
more coveted by me was a special Hello Kitty macarons box they were
offering.
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| Laduree's Hello Kitty box |
The macarons themselves came in many exotic flavours, such as rosewater and pistachio. Once you make it to the counter with the sweet stuff inside, you only have a very quick time to look at the flavours and make a selection - I think of 8 flavours for the box. I forgot to take a photo of them before scoffing.
The macarons were delicious although, I can't believe I will say this, perhaps a little too sweet! That is an odd thing for even me to say.
Wednesday started as a clear and freezing day as we joined the early morning queue outside Musée du Louvre's glass pyramid entrance with other tourists.
We had bought a two day Paris museum pass from the tourist information office, which gives access to as many major museums as we could handle. Even though we prided ourselves on the museum pass giving us priority access and getting there half an hour before opening time, there was still a long queue. The Louvre crowds were absolutely crazy, people!
I had been to the Louvre before and knew we just had to head straight to the Mona Lisa, as this was the most popular crowd-wise. On opening time it was like someone had started a shotgun and we were racing with others, following the 'Mona-Lisa-this-way' style signs.
Actually, I’m not so particularly fond of the Mona Lisa. It’s a nice painting and she seems like a lovely lady, but I don’t understand the attraction over other artworks. It was as I remembered when I viewed it in 2003. Small, protected by glass and a rope barrier, and with a crowd of people in front taking photos. It's hard to contemplate such a painting with such a spectacle around it.
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| Louvre pyramid entrance |
With that enigmatic lady ticked off our list, we were free to
browse the rest of the museum. We actually spent the most time in the Ancient
Egyptian treasures section.
After spending 3 hours at a famous gallery with crowds so dense that trying to get to the exit was like trying to walk through jelly, you would think it would not be wise to then go and visit another popular gallery. Oh but we had our 2 day museum pass and time was ticking. We were out to get value.  |
| Ancient Egyptian cat WITH KITTENS!! So cute! |
Our next stop of the day was the Musee D’Orsay, or as I like to call it - the 'Museum D’Awesome'. I love this museum! It’s full of more Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas and Van Gogh than you can poke an impressionist stick at. (that would be one blurry stick).
We started at the top gallery with most of the famous paintings and worked our way down. 3 hours or so later, I was full of wonderful images in my head and a small credit card bill from the gift shop. I even bought a view finder with paintings inside!
We went to a movie, English with French subtitles (when choosing you have to look to see which movies are subtitled and which are dubbed into French) and had dinner at a vegetarian/vegan restaurant called Saveurs Veget’Halles. I’d read this restaurant has gluten free options, and there they were listed on the menu as ‘Sans Gluten’. I was dubious about all the mock meat though. Often these aren't gluten free. But it was, because I didn't get sick.
Being able to eat this was fantastic, as I'd just been eating plain chips (Lays 'nature' chips) and muesli bars up to this point:
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| Dinner at Saveurs Veget’Halles |
On Thursday morning our 2-day museum pass marathon continued unrelenting with a visit to the La Cinematheque Francaise, a museum focusing on the early history of cinema, and the key role of France. Lots of costumes, props, displays of early technology and film segments. Very interesting.
The museum asked for our passports on the way in, which we didn't have on us. I don't know what that was about! Interestingly, for some reason the displays included the prosthetic model of the head of Norman Bate’s mother (from that ‘reveal’ scene). A Tim Burton exhibition was on display here, which we had already seen in Melbourne.
Lunch was at Helmut Newcake, a completely gluten free café. I'll say that again: completely! gluten free! cafe! They didn’t have savoury options so I just had to have sweet treats for lunch:
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| Gluten free cakes ready to be eaten at Helmut Newcake |
Being museum-tired-out already, a quick viewing of the art works was followed by an exhibition on comic artist Art Spiegelman. Strangely I learnt a lot about Peanuts and Charles Schulz in this exhibition as Spiegelman was a fan! There was a Matisse exhibition which I would have liked to have seen, so colourful, but the crowds were crazy as usual and we would have had to pay (I know, frugal is boring...)
Friday was spent in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. It sounds grave I know, but there are some famous folk permanently hanging out in this place. Among them are early French cinema pioneer and all round fantastical imagery visionary Georges Melies, and author and all round general witty genius Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison. They even sell tourist maps of the cemetery outside. I hope it’s not disrespectful to walk around gravestones and tombs, map and camera in hand, trying to find a celebrity. I like to think its more of a pilgrimage paying respect to those we admire.
The last time I visited in 2003, dear Oscar’s dramatic tomb was covered in lipstick kisses, but has now been cleaned and protected with a glass barrier. So people are leaving lipstick kisses on the glass instead.
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| Oscar Wilde's tomb |
And so we ended the day at the Jardin du Luxembourg, and by some miracle the weather turned sunny. So many tulips!
On Saturday we went on a tour company day trip to Giverny and Versailles in a big double decker bus. Giverny is a small village in Normandy, not very far from the centre of Paris. Giverny is pretty in its own right, but it is mostly famous for being the home of Claude Monet.
Although the thought did pass my mind that the gardening bills must be massive. And our tour guide said the village folk at the time thought of Monet as a bothersome eccentric who was wasting land and resources on the folly of flowers. C’est la vie!
Before hopping on a train we said a fond farewell to the lovely hotel manager at the Grand Hotel Francais, which was a great place to stay in the lively area of the 11th arrondissement. He had very patiently encouraged but ultimately struggled to get anything more than simple French out of us. Lumbering past the interesting street market with luggage to the metro of many stairs and not many escalators or lifts, we were headed to our next stop - Paris Disneyland!
Monet's house includes large expanses of gardens, including the famous Japanese-style garden with a bridge and waterlilies depicted in Monet's impressionist paintings. There is also a formal French garden. Luckily our tour allowed us to walk around free for a couple of hours, exploring the gardens and inside the house (no photos were allowed inside). So many flowers in all colours imaginable. The whole gardens were exploding flowers, and we, grown adults, like children walking around the Willy Wonka factory succumbed to flower awe. So beautiful! Despite the ever present rain, it was like being in a flower paradise.
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| Monet's house |
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| Monet's bridge in the Japanese style garden |
Our tour included being driven through the rain to a picturesque restaurant near a river and old mill for lunch. Here the waiters valiantly tried to deal with my vegetarian and gluten free oddities. I had back-up snacks at the ready. I was presented with salad and oranges though, which was nice! We also met some talkative Americans at our table and I learnt about space exploration and the American health care system.
Then it was back on the tour bus to travel across the Normandy countryside to the Château de Versailles, the opulent home of French royalty in the 1600’s and 1700’s until they got the chop in the French revolution of 1789. The grandeur and crowds were overwhelming. We lost our tour guide more than once, or it seemed she ran away from us.
It was surreal to believe so much history had taken place in the very spots that we now stood. So many frescoes, chandeliers, curtains, mirrors, gilding! It was almost too much!
The gardens were so large that you could spend a whole day there, with formal hedges and fountains and beautiful flowers (yes, tulips). The gardens are so large that there is a golf buggy hire option. We only had about half an hour to gawp before it was time to head home on the tour bus.
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| A chandelier hanging out at the Palace of Versailles |
On Sunday we took it easy, and much as Paris seemed to be resting also. We headed out of our hotel to find the street we were on, Boulevard Voltaire, had been magically transformed into a street market. Everything from gilt mirrors, cheap toys, bulk cosmetics, violins, bad 80’s albums, paintings and nik naks were on tables lining both sides of the long street.
Heading to the historic neighbourhood of Marais, it was both asleep and pretty, although we did unexpectedly bump into the Paris marathon in full progress! And in the Latin Quarter, the Rue Mouffetard has a health food shop with much gluten free food, and we also stumbled across a vegan cupcake bakery, although there were no gluten free options so I could only drool. The cupcakes all have funny names:
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| Vegan cupcake shop - John Lemon, Austin Flower, Sid Delicious..... |
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