Paris

Oooh la la!

This city is beautiful, smelly, chic, ornate, dusty, busy, delicious and wonderful.

So far we’ve only had one dodgy meal, when we found ourselves in the middle of the 1st arrondissement at 7pm on Sunday evening – the only open restaurant we could find was a tourist trap which served overpriced and not-very-tasty food. However, since then every meal – even the simplest pain au chocolat eaten while walking – has been very good. We are staying in Montmartre, and this morning we had breakfast (a la Anglais, which meant it came with tea and an omelette) in a local bar, where the neighbourhood drunk was regaling people with wild gestures and incomprehensible tales. Eventually he fell asleep on a chair on the footpath, and when we left he’d just fallen out of his chair onto the pavement, fast asleep (or in an alcoholic coma). This was at 9am.

So far we have climbed up the Arc De Triomphe (284 steps! 9€ a ticket, wonderful panoramic view of Paris), wandered around the Louvre (also 9€, spectacular art), walked around the Eiffel Tower (didn’t go in – the lines were daunting), walked along the Champs Elysee, got covered in dust in the Jardins des Tuileries, ridden the Metro (surprisingly easy to navigate), and sat in the Sacré-Cœur Basilica.

I am still wishing I spoke even a smidgeon of French, but so far my trusty Eyewitness Travel French Visual Guidebook is doing its job and we are surviving. It works fine when I need to order deux chocolats chaud, s’il vous plait (two hot chocolates, please) and ask for cinq timbres (five stamps), and all the rest.

Tomorrow we head to Nice, where we are seeing REM at 8pm! Unfortunately our stay in Nice has had to be cut short, as the trains are all booked up for the Bastille Day holiday. We are lucky we decided to buy first class Eurail passes, as an American couple in the line at the station also wanted to go to Nice but there were no second class tickets available! Thus:

10 July 0854 Gare De Lyon station, arriving 1051 Lyon Part-Dieu. 1107 Lyon Part-Dieu to Nice, arriving Nice 1537.

11 July 0939 Nice, arriving Gare De Lyon 1519. Then we take the Metro to Gare Du Nord station where we board the 1655 train to Bruxelles (Brussels). We arrive Brussels 1817, and hop on the 1915 train to Amsterdam, where we will be arriving at 2206.

We might be able to wake up early on Thursday morning to walk on the beach in Nice before getting the train back to Paris, assuming the REM concert isn’t too rollicking. (We can sleep on the train, after all, right?)