June 5
In June 2013, we went on a 7-day,
6-night Paris tour from London, and yes on Eurostar (to and fro). It was a different experience. The train is
under water for about 20 minutes or so when it covers the 50km Euro tunnel.
While all small tunnels in London created air pressure issues in our eardrums,
never during the 50km stretch of Euro tunnel we faced any air pressure
problems.
London is a safe city, but only
when we reached Paris, we acknowledged how safe London seems! Gare du Nord (The
North Station), where Eurostar terminates is surrounded by scary looking folks.
This area is also home for the largest number of South Indian restaurants in
Paris and is called “Little Pondichery”. We picked up to-go stuff from Saravana
Bhavan; didn’t dare to avail their dine-in facility as it was getting late in
the evening.
To get comfortable with public
transport, we had gone on metro to take a London tour the day before. However,
getting around Paris was a challenge by itself; language, food (or lack thereof
of vegetarian food), street and station names you can’t pronounce correctly
were some of these challenges. Smartphone came in handy; with google maps to
help us find walking routes and vegetarian places including Subway. While
google maps favored Paris metro as the public transport mode, an app from RATP
(the organization which runs Paris public transport) typically favored buses.
So when we wanted to take surface transport, we used to look up RATP.
French-English translator apps also helped us from time to time.
Both google maps and RATP however
failed to spot that the transfer station, where we had to change the line to go
to our hotel from Gare du Nord, had some construction going on and we couldn’t
get on the connecting train from that station. So we had to walk to a prior
station with all the luggage and board the train! Luckily, our hotel, with tiny
room, was next to the metro station.
June 6
Next day, we walked to Arc de
Triomphe (17 min walk) and purchased Paris 4-day museum passes. The museum pass
covers many Paris museums including Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Arc de Triomphe etc.
No, it does not cover Eiffel Tower; you have to book it separately either
online or by standing the long ticket queue. We had purchased Eiffel Tower tour
tickets online, but it was on the 4th day of our tour. That means,
we have to take some time out from our 4-day museum passL
The next challenge was to
purchase a ticket to zone 4 as we wanted to go to Palace of Versailles (don’t
try to pronounce it the English way). After walking for 15-20 min in the sun
from the train station, we reached the palace. French kings used to live in
this palace before the French revolution. Looking at the lavish lifestyle, it’s
no wonder French people revolted against the kingdom in the 18th
century. The room sizes, number of rooms, drapery, decoration, paintings on the
ceiling, exquisite beds, everything was majestic!
A walking tour of the entire
Palace Gardens would take about 4 hours; well of course you can take horseback
rides too to save on time. We didn’t have the time or energy and it started
raining, so we cut our tour short and returned to the train station, boarded a
train to Paris and went straight to our hotel.
Touring Paris requires lot of
walking, all of us walked around 6-7kms each day.
June 7
On the third day, we set out for
Sainte Chapelle. Some travel sites warned us that since this church shares
premises with legal offices, there would be a lot of security and queue. To our
surprise, there was hardly any queue. This church was built in 1248 by Saint
Louis; King Louis IX posthumously got sainthood. The lower floor of the church
is so-so, but when you go up the spiral staircase, the vastness of upper floor
beckons you. It has 16 huge stained glass windows. This church is a masterpiece
of Gothic architecture.
After the church, we went into La
Conceirgerie, an old prison and courthouse. The widow of Louis XVI was
imprisoned here before her execution as part of French revolution.
We thought we wasted time at La Conciergerie,
because when we reached Notre Dame, the largest church and also the
geographical center of Paris (and kilometer zero for France), there was a huge
queue. We realized a little late that the queue was for getting to the top of
the spires. While we waited, we had the authentic Parisian food – a sandwich
which was hard and tastelessL.
Our daughter was scared to go on the spiral staircase; however she somehow
managed to climb some 300+ steps to the top of the North Spire from where we
got beautiful views of Paris. Of course, we could have climbed another 100
steps to reach the summit, but thought this view is good enoughJ, after all we had to take
those many steps on the spiral staircase to go down.
After getting down, we went to
the front entrance. The queue was even longer, but it was moving very fast.
Within minutes, we were inside this huge Cathedral.
From Notre Dame, we went to Musee
d’Orsay, which is a train station converted into a museum. It had exquisite
collection of statues and paintings. Spread over 5 floors, we barely got to
cover the whole of it before the museum closed for the day.
From there, we went to Champ de
Mars gardens (okay, no English pronunciation) to see Eiffel Tower from up
close. At one of the towers, we checked about our appointment the following
day. The lady told us that you just have to arrive 5 min before the scheduled
appointment. Looking at the queue for tickets, 5 min seemed like nanoseconds!
After having pizza at a pizzeria listed by Rick Steves as the best, cheap pizza
place in Paris, we returned to our hotel room. The next day was even more
jam-packed.
June 8
I wrongly thought that Sacre
Couer (Sacred Hearts), a church in the northern part of Paris is part of the
museum pass and has to be visited during these 4 days. While reaching there, we
realized that it requires yet another ticket to go up another 100+ steps. The
church itself is on a hill and you can see most of Paris, so we didn’t find any
reason to climb those 100 steps to get even better view. Any way, we had a
booking for Eiffel Tower summit in the afternoon, which would give us much
better views!
We reached Sacre Couer using a
combination of metro and a funicular. Our daughter found moving statues there
and folks were getting their pictures along with these human statues. They were
wearing white clothes with white paint all over as it they were statues. This
basilica is also a popular place for weddings; we saw one such couple on the
slopes of this hill. Unlike Notre Dame which is a (huge) rectangle in shape,
Sacre Couer is round or oblong in shape.
After realizing that this is not
a museum pass attraction, we left the place as soon as possible and boarded
metro to take us to Hotel des Invalides. Originally built as a home for the
disabled and wounded war veterans, this huge complex is now converted into an
army museum featuring body armor, weapons and other war related material. The
huge dome houses the burial site for Napoleon and some other war veterans. Napoleon’s
tomb symbolizes the respect a person can get after his death. It is surrounded and
guarded by several statues of angels.
Well, we were getting late for
our 1:30pm appointment at Eiffel Tower, so we thought that we will cover the
museum part later in the day. The distance was a little too much for a walk but
little too less for metro; but it was just right for a bus ride! So we looked
up RATP app and boarded a bus. Another Indian family on the bus wanted some tour
guidance so we shared our metro pass & museum pass experience. They were
also headed for Eiffel Tower, but they had no booking. After reaching Champ de
Mars, we met one more Indian family. They asked us about where Saravana Bhavan
is! Well it’s at least 30 min far on a metro ride we told. The next question
was if there is an Indian place to eat nearby. We shared names of a couple of
Indian restaurants nearby and we became their “guides”.
We reached the tower 10 min
before time and wasted those extra 5 min. At 1:30, we were let in and we
boarded 2 different elevators to reach the summit. The day was clear and we got
a great view from the top; the view included a huge fountain, Hotel des
Invalides, Seine River, Champ de Mars gardens, Arc de Triomphe and a huge
building which almost looked like a miniature China Wall. After spending some
time at the summit, we came down to the second floor, ate some stuff and went
around the 2nd floor. After around 2-2 ½ hours on the tower, we came
down and took the same bus (other direction) back to Hotel des Invalides area
where we first visited Musee Rodin and then the Hotel to cover the army museum.
From there we walked to Champs-Élysées
(Google for its French pronunciation), a good 3 km walk. Every 100m or so, we
used to turn back and admire the magnificence of Hotel des Invalides. The whole
area is so meant for tourists. The Avenue des Champs Elysées is a well-known
avenue in Paris which is lined with horse-chestnut trees, and filled with
expensive boutiques and eateries. After having pizza at one such eatery, we
went to Arc de Triomphe.
It was cloudy and it appeared
that rains will start any moment now. We were tired to climb up the 200+ steps
to the top of the Arc, some 50m high, so we chose the elevator route (which
many people don’t realize that there is such an option). If we had taken the
stairs, we would have been a little too late to view the glittering Eiffel
Tower. The tower shimmers for about 5 min at the top of the hour during the
dusk and night hours. We would have also faced the rains which started while we
were at the top if we hadn’t taken the elevator. From the top, we could see all
the 12 avenues which meet at Arc de Triomphe and Avenue des Champs Elysées was
the most conspicuous one, with several feet of walkway on either side of the
wide road along with area dedicated for the trees.
June 9
It was our last day of the
validity of museum pass and we hadn’t seen the World famous museum, Louvre!
It’s the largest museum in the World in terms of the size and displays. With
over 60K square meters, it easily takes weeks or even months for a true art
enthusiast. We were lucky; we had only a day, a few hours in fact. Our daughter
was jittery from the get go and I won’t blame her. After all, I did not even
finish one of the caves in Ellora when I was her age.
Remember the other day; we saw a
mini-China wall from Eiffel Tower. Well, it’s the Louvre museum building, a
former royal palace. The building runs into several hundred meters with all its
5 floors and basement showing exquisite art collection. On top of this, Louvre
gets items on loan from museums around the World and if you are an enthusiast,
you would like to see those temporary displays as well.
The main attraction of Louvre is
Mona Lisa painting. It’s a feat to take a picture of Mona Lisa without also
capturing hand(s) &/or head(s) of other people doing the same. That place
is so crowded for a piece of art, although important, not so exquisite compared
to other displays.
We barely finished walking 3 of
the 5 floors when it was time for the museum to shut its doors for the day! Oh,
what a relief, at least for me and our daughter! Like an electric switch, she
became all the more energetic after coming out of the museum and as we started
walking on the city roads. Our next stop was Concorde Square, a huge square (21
acres according to Wikipedia) with a giant gold-leaf capped Egyptian Obelisk
(column) in the center. Concorde square is the other end of Avenue des Champs
Elysées.
June 10
With our museum pass expired and
still 2 more top 10 Paris attractions to visit; we were prepared to just buy
tickets after reaching the places, hoping that the ticket queue would not be
big. Bus stop next to our hotel was on the route to Pantheon (not in Rome, the
one in Paris). It was a very good bus ride from the main areas of Paris city,
including Concorde Square, Notre Dame etc. We were anyway not interested in
going inside the mausoleum where many distinguished French people are buried.
We enjoyed its architecture from outside and went to a Creperie. After having crepes there, we started walking
towards Pompidou.
It was a long walk. On the route,
we came across University of Paris, some Indian restaurants and several souvenir
shops.
Pompidou is a modern and a bit
crazy architecture which houses modern art. Looking at the general shape and
appearance, we did not feel like going inside. After all, during the previous 5
days, we had made up an impression in our minds about what architecture suits
Paris and Pompidou was nowhere close to that.
It was time to go on a Siene River
cruise. So we took metro back to Champs Elysées and walked a couple of km to Pont
de l'Alma to take the Bateaux Mouches river cruise. It was a 70 min cruise on a
fairly large boat. All passengers were on the top floor and no one occupied the
bottom, glassed floor of the boat. It went upstream covering Musee d’Orsay,
Louvre museum, Hotel des Invalides; went around the island where Notre Dame is
standing and then back to Pont de l'Alma. It went further downstream to cover
the Paris icon, Eiffel Tower. It was an enjoyable ride.
We wanted to go to the “huge fountain”
that we saw from Eiffel Tower. That area is called Trocadero. Ok, we referred
to our guide – RATP app and boarded a bus to take us to Trocadero. You get the
best view of Eiffel Tower from Trocadero, not from the base of the tower. By
the time we reached there, the fountain was stopped; nonetheless, the place and
the view are memorable.
June 11
We had almost a full day at
leisure because our train to London was in the evening. With all top
attractions covered, my wife thought of visiting trendy shops; after all we
were in the fashion capital of the World. Although, Champs Elysées is supposed
to have lot of those shops, apart from Louis Vuitton, we didn’t find any worth
mentioning. So, we went to a place called Madeline (which we had seen from our
bus while going to Pantheon the previous day).
After window shopping there, we
went to Galeries Lafayette, a 7-story shop similar to Macy’s in New York.
Parisians are clever at converting old buildings into either museums or
shopping places; Galeries Lafayette is one such building.
I and our daughter were more
interested in going to top floor (with no shops) but just the views of Paris.
After giving my wife plenty of time (1+ hour) to shop or otherwise, we went
back to our hotel, picked up our luggage (they were gracious enough to let our
luggage stay in the lobby after check out) and boarded the metro to get back to
Gare du Nord.
It would have been the same
nightmare as day one because the transfer station was still under construction.
Technology failed here and I had to resort to paper map to find an alternative.
Luckily I found one which would take some more time on the train but no walking
between stations. We wanted to tell this newfound route (I was feeling like
Columbus) to the French (?) family who were going to the same destination, but
language barrier kicked in and they were left with that tedious walk between
stations with all their luggage.
After reaching Gare du Nord, our
first stop was Saravana Bhavan. This time, it was a dine-in affair; we had
enough time on our hand and it was broad daylight, so no worries. After
reaching the station, we cleared immigration. One of our friends’ luggage,
including expensive Nikon camera and passports, was stolen on the station while
they were filling the immigration forms. We were very scared about such an
incident and looking at the station atmosphere where cops were dragging a few
folks, it felt even scarier.
We breathed a sigh of relief
after boarding the Eurostar train. After 2 ½ hours we were in London St
Pancreas International station. The city almost felt like home.
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