4 days in Paris (not just an evening...)

Here is the next part in the series, Paris.
We continued our European journey by taking the high-speed TGV train to Paris, reaching the Gare de Lyon station in Paris at around 1 PM.

Day 1: Rest Day
The Paris station could not have been more of a contrast to the ones in Switzerland. It was crowded, chaotic, comparatively dirty, feeling a lot like Chennai central. We grabbed a couple of taxis and got to our hotel Des Ducs D'anjou. A purported 4* hotel, it was a converted town home, which meant the rooms were small and cramped, standard fare for a central Paris hotel. We got the "Blue Suite", which is the glorified attic, but the location can't be beat for access to all Paris sights. Aditya loved his personal bed with curtains.

The first night in Paris was a night for relaxing and getting our bearings. That is also the night when we discovered the definition of "Close" in Paris terms. We were told Louvre was "close", so we started walking in that direction on Rue di Ravoli, only to find that we arrived at the tail end of the museum away from the entrance after a 40 min walk.....Giving in to the whines of the kids, we took the metro back, reaching our hotel in exactly 8 min.

After a dinner consisting of excellent Onion soup, Toasted Goat Cheese (my new favorite cheese, so smooth, so creamy) and Chocolate cake overlooking the Pompidou Center, we turned in for the night.

Day 2: Versailles and Musee d'Orsay
The next day dawned bright and early, again finding me on my morning wanderings while Adi and Srinivas slept. I found the local grocery stores Monoprix, Franprix, a creperie for breakfast and a Starbucks for the unadventurous in our party.

Once everyone was ready, we got on the metro towards Versailles, home to the famous Palace of Versailles, seat of the French Royalty until they were overthrown during the french revolution.  Arriving before the palace opened, we were one of the first few folks to enter, and we were able to enjoy the place with relatively fewer crowds and hardly any lines.

 The sheer magnitude and opulence of the palace was shocking, that too considering the fact that a majority of the possessions in the palace such as furniture and art was burned during the revolution.

The paintings, the decorations, the bed chambers of king and queen, the walls, the ceilings, the gardens and the grounds were vast, imposing, beautiful, opulent...you can add your favorite choice of adjectives and they would not do justice to this place.

The king's bed, with a lady statue representing France, watching over the king

Queen's Bed Chamber, where Marie Antoinette escaped the rioting crowds via a secret door

Hall of Mirrors, where the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I and that caused World War II was signed

The famous painters and sculptors whose works I was able to view are too numerous, and in fact, they deserve their own post and I will chronicle their names from our visits to the various palaces and museums in Paris and London, so I shall refrain from referring to their names here.

After grabbing lunch again consisting of Onion Soup and Goat Cheese for me (I really liked those two...) Pizza etc for Aditya and Srinivas, we rested our weary legs on our way back to Paris on the metro.

Arriving in Paris, we ambled over to Musee d'Orsay, home to some of the most famous Impressionist paintings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
By any token, our family is novices when it comes to art, so I was quite pleasantly surprised by the level of interest Aditya displayed in the various museums, which admittedly at 2 hours was less than what a connoisseur might feel is worthy, was beyond my expectations for him and Srinivas. It did help that I bought a few history/culture books for him earlier, which meant he was familiar with most of the artiste names, and even some of the works, dragging me across the gallery excitedly, to show me those....

Famous works at d'Orsay:
 Starry Night by Van Gogh
Dance in the Country by Renoir
Lunch in the garden by Monet

Day 3: le Louvre and le Tour Eiffel
The day started spectacularly, with a Mont Blanc Pastry and Chocolate Chaud(hot) at Angelina's, a world famous Parisian bakery on Rue di Ravoli. Again getting there early helped us save the trouble of standing in line to sample the wonderful delights of this place. We then met our tour guide for the museum and made our way to the Louvre pyramid entrance, walking across the Tuileries gardens and, under the Arc du Carousel (may I suggest a refresher to the Davinci Code?).

Of course, the guide started her tour stating unequivocally that no one is buried under the inverse pyramid and the Louvre pyramid is not made up of 666 glass panes (trust Aditya to know the significance of 666).

We then made our way through the museum to see the 3-famous ladies of Louvre: Nike aka Winged Victory, Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa. Having seen reproductions of these famous works many times, seeing them in person raised goosebumps on my arms.

      

We also saw a few other famous works : Da Vinci's Madonna on the Rocks, Napolean's coronation, Sculpture of a slave by Michelangelo etc in the European section before  moving on to the Egyptian wing for a glimpse of the Sphinx from the Valley of Kings in Egypt. From there we made our way to the Mesopotamian wing for the Stele of the Code of Hammurabi, the first known human laws ever made.

Spending 4 hours, we barely covered a tiny fraction of the huge museum and in fact, I would love the opportunity to come back and visit this museum again, sampling few more of the historical artifacts on display here.

We then made our way to visit the Eiffel Tower, another if not THE iconic landmark of Paris. While no longer of any significance when talking tall buildings (the current world's tallest is almost twice as tall), it was a beautiful and imposing structure, offering great views of the Seine river and city of Paris from the top.

Our drive to le Tour Eiffel took us along the famous Champs Elysee, from the Egyptian obelisk at Place du Concorde to Napolean's Arc de Triomphe, barricades from the Bastille Day military parade of the previous day still intact. An early dinner was in the works, followed by a good night's sleep, as tired out from the day, we decided to skip out on our plans to visit the Eiffel Tower again in the night.

   




Day 4: Notre Dame Cathedral and Latin Quarter
With scarcely  half day left in our Paris stay, as we were catching the Eurostar that evening to London, we packed up our stuff, and walked over to the Notre Dame (Our Lady) Cathedral, immortalized by Victor Hugo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The cathedral is built in the Gothic architecture, unlike the majority of cathedrals following the Romanesque style.

  

We arrived in time for the afternoon Eucharist mass, our first ever mass attended.

                                                      
Already familiar with the ceremony of Eucharist, or the Holy Communion, a reenactment of the last supper, I explained its significance to a fidgeting Aditya, who started giggling at the rendition of "Hallelujah"  , remembering a recent Mr.Bean episode he watched.....

Notre Dame is a beautiful church and it's treasury holds the "Crown of Thorns"-  purported to be the original Crown on Jesus's head, as well as a fragment of wood believed to be from the original cross and a "Holy Nail".

The crown of Thorns

It's a building rife with history, where Napolean was crowned king of France, where Joan of Arc was canonized (a statue of her is visible in the collage above) and is the home of the famous gargoyles and chimeras that spawned a new architecture style.

After our visit to Notre Dame, we walked to the Latin Quarter, home of the Parisian artist community, but more importantly Paris food scene, grabbed our final lunch in Paris and walked back to our hotel.

Collecting our baggage, we left for Gare du Nord(North Station), completed our immigration formalities for entering the United Kingdom and boarded the Euro Star for our Chunnel ride, landing in King's Cross station after an uneventful journey.

Me and my "French": Through my years of Agatha Christie and 8 years of Actel with French colleagues, I surprised myself at how much French I absorbed:-) In a supposedly rude country where people are downright nasty to tourists, its a wonder how much a "Bonjour" or a "Pouvez-vous m'aider sil vous plait" or "merci beaucoup" gets you. I used my broken french and their broken English to find out the location of a second elevator at the Eiffel Tower, translate the French translation of Code of Hammurabi into English at the Louvre, been asked  "French?" from a "garçon" after ordering "un evian, un confit du canard, sil vous plait" and answering "ce bon" to a question about how good the food was...It was extremely gratifying to be able to read a lot of the signs in a completely foreign language and understand what they meant :-)
Aditya also thoroughly enjoyed the experience, asking the waitress, "excusez-moi madame, Où sont les toilettes ?" and saying "merci beaucoup" to every one....