Paris

Because of the train delays, we arrived at Paris two hours late. We disembarked at the main northern hub - Gare du Nord. It looked a bit like Soweto. It was very crowded, noisy and unfriendly. It was also raining which didn't help matters. We had never used a subway before so it was all a bit new, while waiting to buy our tickets an American in queue told us that all subways were the same in that once you knew where you were going you needed to follow the colour to get to where you wanted to be. This was an excellent tip and made our trip easier, but the Paris subways were very very crowded, dirty and a bit frightening.

We took the metro to the Eiffel tower. The first thing we noticed were thousands of people in queues to go up into the tower.

At regular intervals we were approached by gypsies holding a scrawled note saying "excuse me you speak english". They must have all gone to the same begging school as they all had the same piece of paper and dress.

From there, we walked to the Trogadera and onto the Arc de Triumph and Champs Elysees. We didnt see Elle Macpherson there. But we did see some shoes that cost 6000 euros.


We were stretched for time and had planned to skip the Louvre, however as we passed, admission was only 11 euros so we decided to do a whirlwind tour. We were very glad we did. The place is spectacular.









Even without the paintings, the building is very grand. The only let-down was the Mona Lisa. In a gallery of thousands of amazing paintings, it seems a bit ordinary.












We went on to the Notre Dame. I was amazed at the scale of that building. How did they get such massive slabs of rock eight stories high without modern technology?









We had dinner in the Latin Quarter with our friends Rob and Alexander in a French style resturant. We had snails. It was fantastic.











Our hotel was called the PortRoyal. It was n the Latin Quarter, excellent value, clean and with friendly staff. It was hundreds of years old and in the Latin Quarter - just a short walk from Rue Moffatard. Thats a lane lined with resturants and coffee shops that leads towards the Notre Dame.





The next day we had planned to go to the artist district Montemarte, but it was raining, so we just wasted time around our hotel until time to take a train to Orly airport for our flight to Geneva. Just up the road from our hotel is a prison. In the past, when executions were scheduled, a gullotine would be erected on a street corner. The priest and executioneer would stay at our hotel, so it would be a short walk to be sure they could be in place by 5am, the scheduled time for public executions.

Comment

At any time there must be tens of thousands of tourists pouring money into the economy. Despite that, the French make hardly any concessions at all. Would it hurt to have translations at points of interest? Other countries have information in a few languages.

We took the train to Orly airport. As airports go, its just a huge shed for moving masses of people with no style or grace. Our flight was listed on the departure board without any gate number, til way past the departure time. We were more than a bit concerned. It was difficult to find anybody from Easy Jet to get an explanation. We found out later that the previous flight out of the UK was delayed by volcanic ash. This had a flow on effect to us.