July 16, 2008

The leisurely holidays were over and it was back to schedules, big cites and tourist traps for us. We packed up the rest of our belongings and precious booze cargo and disembarked with one last picture of us and our boat. Then we headed along the canal bank to the foot bridge so we could cross to the train station we had been at a scant 11 days earlier. Along the way we stopped and had a little picnic, checked out the cool topiaries and visited an old wash house. These wash houses were where traditionally the village people would bring their clothes and wash them. Most of them have been converted to pretty ponds and we would see many more of them on subsequent trips.

 

At the station we boarded our train, a double decker commuter, quite unlike our previous train. After a short wait in the mostly empty car,  it started to move and we waved goodbye to our boat, looking sad and forlorn across the basin. Then L settled in to read Madame Bovary and the rest of us sat back and watched the countryside roll by.

Paris. We disembarked and crossed the street to our hotel; it was much easier to find this time. This was our (Zak and I’s ) last day in France and we had some major sight seeing to do, so we dumped our bags and crossed the Seine to start getting to it.

We wandered by the Museum of Natural Heritage but then ducked down into the Metro. One of my first experiences with big city transit, I was was suitably impressed with how easy it was to navigate (once we figured out the ticket machines) and soon we were off scurrying across underground Paris. We popped up somewhere near the Eiffel Tower, although we couldn’t actually see it, and eventually came across the long grassed green (Champs de Mars) that leads to the base of the tower. We took our time and meandered along and soon were directly under Mr. Eiffel’s amazing edifice. No one particularly wanted to wait in the long lines to ascend so we read the signs, admired the legs and ate a couple of baguette dogs.

Then we crossed the Seine again, stopping along the way to watch the illegal street vendors and tourists interact and of course the Sûreté who would eventually arrive to chase them off. The river itself was full of tour boats and industrial barges, with seemingly as much traffic as the roads had. Across the river we looked back to admire the Tower once more before we then struck off to the Arc de Triumph. Some of the building architecture along the route was breathtaking and a real insight into the cultural history of the city and its inhabitants. I love old cities.

We toured the Arc, read the signs and admired the construction and sculpture, taking a moment to appreciate its dedications to soldiers past. But once again we  decided against the lines and did not pay to climb to the top.

Then we were off again on our whirlwind tour of Paris’ must-see sights. We hit the Metro again and travelled under the Champs de L’Elysée: shopping was just not our thing. We popped up again (with a few mishaps involving wrong stops and missing tickets) at Les Invalides, home of a war museum and Napoleon’s tomb. We were still on a time budget so we decided not to visit this trip. After sitting and admiring  for a while we walked down embassy row and checked out the Canadian embassy. The we turned and followed the river walking by all the best buildings like the Musée d’Orsay and the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères.

Then we crossed the Pont Royal and came out near the Jardin des Tuileries right across from the smaller Arc de triumphe du Carrousel and of course, the Palace des Tuileries, home of the Louvre.

We wandered the Gardens for a bit and a seemingly delightful man offered to draw a picture of Zak. We didn’t realize at the time this was the beginning of his tiny scam to separate us from our money, but figured it out when he then tried to insist that we owed him for the drawing we hadn’t asked for. Picking the kid was his ploy to make us “want” to have it despite the cost. In the end we paid him something to avoid the scene and thus justified his little game. Sigh. Tourists. We are all the same…

Wednesday evening is cheap night at the Louvre. All right, I don’t think it was actually cheaper, but it is open late on Wednesdays and the crowds were smaller So we headed in to see what we could see. Outside the little glass cleaning robot was clinging to the sides of the glass pyramids so I snapped a few pictures of that. Most famous art museum in the world and I am taking pictures of a robot. Huh.

We bought our tickets and decided it was every humanoid for him/herself. So we split up and went. I decided bulk was more important than individual appreciation, so I managed to cover pretty much the whole museum in the few hours we had. I think everyone else tried to concentrate a bit more on the experience. Still I saw what I wanted and discovered a few things that still amaze me.

We met back up at the end of the traditional closing-time-visitor-herding-manoeuvre and posed for a picture by the inverted glass pyramid. Then we took the Metro back to the hotel and sat on the street eating and sharing one last glass of French wine. Bonne nuit Paris; it had been a hell of an introduction to travelling abroad.