Tue, 28 Oct 2003

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 21:34 CET 29/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Fantastic Parisian Weather! ( 49 photos )
Breakfast went by almost as a replay of the previous day - same seats, same family nearby and same strange woman running the show.
But outside, it was a different matter. Gone were the clouds of the day before - the weather was absolutely fantastic! Not a cloud in the sky, so we put everything else by the wayside and went out to explore.
After an attempted visit to Shakespeare and Co. bookshop (it was closed), and looking for one of the nearby internet cafés (they and the ones around wanted twelve euro just to connect the laptop to their network!!!), we consulted Lonely Planet for some outdoor things to do around town.
First on the list, and reasonably nearby, was a visit to Jardin du Luxembourg. Everywhere around town, the autumn colours in the trees are gorgeous, leaving amber everywhere (although the street-sweepers are amazingly efficient at cleaning the leaves all away), and the city's gardens are no exception. We wandered through trees, spending time in the sun where possible (still very cold, especially with no clouds about), swapping cameras with some English tourists for a photo shoot, then settling down across the pond from Palais du Luxembourg for some serious relaxing. Here we ate our standard fare (at least it has changed from the standard fare of pasta and sauce a while back, I suppose) and did not much.
Another park was beckoning next, and after a quick trip back to the hotel for some cutlery and supplies, we went to soak up the rays (albeit warmly clothed) in Jardin des Tuileries, next to the Louvre. The hotel strangely provided free copies of The Guardian (English paper similar to The Sydney Morning Herald), or at least we thought they were free, and took one anyway. We read this in parts each for quite some time, enjoying the water, parklands and glorious weather all around us.
After so much lethargy, it was time to get the walking shoes on - this time in a new direction, north. We went through Place de L'Opera, a traffic-choked plaza in front of Paris' impressive Opera House. I've heard it described it as ugly, and perhaps compared to Sydney's it isn't fantastic, but still it is far more attractive than the last piece of property we owned, Rosie the big red bus, so I don't think people can really whinge.
While I remember, Parisian drivers are crazy. They break for pretty much nobody who doesn't have a siren blaring, and few people that do. There are lots of places where there are pedestrian crossings on the road but you'd be pretty foolish to assume that you, as a pedestrian, will actually get braked for. Also, getting from A to B on a map is a slow process here, since there are so many pedestrian crossing lights to navigate - we even have special "Green Man" songs to sing, urging him to appear so we can get somewhere.
Right, back on track, further next we followed the expensive restaurants north along Rue Blanche to arrive at one of the most let-down sights in the city - Moulin Rouge. Sure, we've seen the movie a few times, and obviously didn't expect it to be much like the movie, but we were still dissapointed. Just an ugly building, with an ugly red windmill (hence, of course, Moulin Rouge), and price tags that nobody earning legitimate income could afford. That of course excludes us completely, since we have earnt no income since June.
So, we settled for a few touristy photos, before pushing north in search of a few other interesting-looking things on our tourist map. Up the hill a bit further, there are a couple of other windmills. These at least could actually have been used, since they are not blocked all around by other buildings like Moulin Rouge's one is. Also, I guess, there isn't much need for grinding wheat in that place.
The area from here started to get much more attractive, easily a part of Paris that the tourist buses avoid (actually, they couldn't navigate the windy cobbled streets even if they wanted too), and we spent quite a while looking in pokey little places, walking down the other side of the hill to Paris' last remaining vineard (nothing but vines and signs in French only though), taking a photo or two looking north into the suburbs of Paris, before stumbling back into tourist-land. It was like being woken out of a great dream only to find that actually you are in a really crappy hostel and everyone is snoring and it's only 4am and now you won't get back to sleep. But I digress - it really was sad to get back to the part of town where tourists walked (from the other direction, more on that soon), only to buy truck-loads of Chinese-made garbage and get back on the buses.
Walking past the expensive bars and cafés, it wasn't hard to see why they were all here - the huge church Sacre Coeur and it's views over the city to the south. On such a day they were really out in droves, so it was amazing to see that when we walked into the church for a look around (on our church-scale, it gets about a 4 out of 10 - we are really fussy now), most people actually followed the instructions, being quiet and not taking photos! That is so rare these days - one of the problems of mass tourism is that people forget that Disneyland and a religeous site are not the same thing, and as such different behavior is expected.
Next we enjoyed the view down over the city, taking it all in, spotting the sights, but noticing that a haze sat over the view, like so many other places. There was a funicular back down but we elected to walk, following pleasant meandering paths down to the bottom, where yet more tourist touts tried to sell us things to put in our hair, barking dogs that run around the ground and of course the ever-present Eiffel Tower keyring.
We walked south-east along the ugly dirty Boulevard de Magenta, turning right randomly into what turned out to be exactly what we had been looking for since we arrived - the cheap part of town! The city is so expensive in the core area (the standard measures are coffee 3 euro, half-litre beer 7 euro and Cornetto Soft 3 euro), that we had pretty much assumed that was the same most places. Instead, it turns out that is just anywhere within say 2km of an open-top tourist bus stop.
Here, we had found where the 'locals' live - dirty, but as multi-cultural as you could imagine, with the food to match. Standard measures dropped to 1 euro coffee, 3 euro beer and 1.50 cornetto! Tempted to drop in and enjoy it all, we restrained ourselves to a cheaper-still baguette to take back with us. On the way we passed a McDonalds which, strangely had been closed - not something you see every day. However, this one had copies of newspaper stories plastered all over it, the gist of which I got was that people had protested about dodgy labour practices and perhaps dodgy food, forcing the place to be closed! If only the rest of the world would follow suit...
Crossing the last few bridges to our hotel, we were presented with one of the most beautiful sunsets we have seen for a long time. Wow. Picture says a thousand words and all that, I'll just shut up on this one.

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