Paris

The first morning in Paris dawned fine. The hotel room in Saint Maurice (I don’t know why you’d want a hotel outside of Paris when there are over 2000 hotels in Paris, said the lady at the station information centre!) once we found it was huge and quiet and at last we found a hotel with air con more to our liking. Already experienced Parisienne Metro travellers, we metro’d to The Eiffel Tower to join a queue of seemingly 100s. We waited in line for two hours before we made it to the escalator to the top and were there for another hour, some of which was also spent in a queue waiting to get to the third level or etage. But the views were stunning and well worth the wait below.
Down from the Tower we ambled through the streets across the Seine via Les Jardins du Trocadero and the Palais de Chaillot towards L’Arc de Triomphe. The views from here down the Etoile (12 roads join here to form a star shape) and down the Champs Elysee and its tree-lined fringes really did match the expectations of Paris in the Spring. A long walk from L’Arc down the Champs Elysee and then via the Seine to the Isle de La Cite took us to the Notre Dame du Paris where after a long wait we stayed for Mass (which for some reason was being televised – maybe we made it on to French TV!) and then caught the Metro back to the hotel. The next day was grey and cold. Just as well we had been to the Tower the day before (the third day was cold grey and wet!). On our second day we did what all tourists to Paris must do: visited the Louvre in the old Royal Residence. A huge site and too much to see so we limited ourselves to the must sees (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, the Winged Mercury) and what we could then fit in over the course of three hours. The paintings of de la Croix were captivating.
Paris was really an enchanting place. The wide tree-lined and flowered streets/boulevards and the abundance of history captured in sculptured art and buildings filled the old city centre where we were limited to for three days. The Basilica du Sacre Cour in Montmartre (and another Mass which also gave us a chance to appreciate the wealth of art in and around the altar); the Cemetery of Montmartre was like a miniature city in itself with tombs of famous French artists/authors and politicians (Alexandre Dumas is buried here and Emile Zola was once buried here before his remains were removed to the Pantheon); a walk to the Place de la Concorde at the Louvre end of the Champs Elysee where stands a 3000 year old obelisk, (‘a gift from the people of Egypt’) from Luxor – we had seen where it previously stood on our trip down the Nile last year.
We spent time wandering to the Bastille thinking that some of what was a part of the French Revolution was still there! But No!!!! Nothing left but a monument topped by a gilded winged Liberty which has been erected on the burial site of Revolutionaries killed in the uprising of 1830.
Other Paris highlights included several churches like the Eglise de la Madeleine; the Jardin des Tuileries; the Promenade Plantee which is a long 4.5km garden built up on a disused railway viaduct near to the Bastille site; walks past the Hotel des Invalides, the Hotel de Ville, the Moulin Rouge, and even the streets around the hotel in Saint Maurice.
So the hotel, despite being located ‘outside of Paris’ – it didn’t appear on any of the tourist oriented street maps – proved to be a good move. Underground/metro fares were less than a Euro each trip and the longest trip was no more than a half hour. We enjoyed Paris – would like to have been able to get to Versailles but with not enough time we have planned to leave that for our next European experience. Paris in the Springtime – Printemps – is great!