Wed, 29 Oct 2003

author Tim	location Paris, France
posted 20:14 CET	section Europe2002/Europe/France/France 2 ( all photos )

Waste then Walk, Musee d'Orsay ( 18 photos )
After our standard breakfast, yet again missing out on the nice table by the window and being placed with the same French family, we went back up to the room, did some washing, etc.
Coming back down to pay for our remaining two nights with a new receptionist, we were a little taken aback to find out that there was no booking for us for the night. The other day, we had been told that there would be four nights, just pay for two at the time, which we did. So, there appeared to be nothing else for it but to pack up and find somewhere else to stay.
After doing that, we headed down into the cold (weather far worse than yesterday with constant drizzle and cold cold cold), along to a phone box, where I waited with the bags while Liz ran off to get us another phone card, since the first one was used up. Quite a waste just to make one call, but none of the phones take coins, so there wasn't much other choice. There was a room available at another cheap pension further out for too much money, so we rang one of the cheaper hostels which said that there were rooms left but they don't take bookings!
So, fast as we could, we went to a tube, found it was the wrong one, picked another, walked half way across Paris under ground to get to the right platform, went three stops, changed to another line by walking almost as far then went one stop. It would have been quicker in retrospect to just walk it, but with all our gear we had decided not to. We would have covered less ground though.
Upon arriving at the hostel, we heard the people in front being told that there wasn't any rooms left for the night! No matter, the helpful guy was happy to tell us of another hostel just down the road, which was quite a bit more expensive, but this guy could offer us a double room for the following two nights, which we took. That gives us three more nights in Paris.
So, lugging gear again down the road to the larger hostel, which is pretty damn horrible. Not in terms of cleanliness or anything, but the receptionists are rude, we are consigned to single-sex dorms (I thought that finished in the 70s?), security is non-existant, we are a lot further out of town and we are paying through the nose for it! Don't waste any time at the MIJ in Rue Titon, 11e if you can avoid it.
So, dumping our bags, we set about exploring the town. The only good thing about this area is that it is way cheaper than the middle. For example, whereas we would pay about 7 euro for a beer in the middle of town (yes, that's actually worse than London), out here it is more like 2.60. We celebrated finally having moved around with a couple of one euro coffees (about a third the price of the middle!) just down the road. The little guy running the bar was quite amused to see tourist-types around, methinks.

First item on the agenda for the day was to book our way out of here, now that we have paid for our last three nights in Paris and leave on the 1st. We headed down Boulevard Diderot to Gare de Lyon, one of Paris' six main intercity and international train stations.
We first tryed to coerce a computer ticket machine into selling us a ticket, and four goes later, we finally had it organised, but it decided that even though it had a sticker on the front saying "Visa", it no longer wanted to accept Visa cards. Or, it goes without saying, cash.
So, we walked over and waited in a line for ten minutes before a helpful girl sold us two tickets on Saturday's 16:15 train to Épernay, the heart of the French wine region. Should be good fun, but for now we had more of Paris to see.
The day's drizzle didn't deter us from stopping along the south bank of the Seine to munch on yet another baguette-and-fruit lunch. We weren't too far from one of the tourist-boat stops, and when one pulled in, a guy wandered if we wanted to jump on board. He didn't appear to be doing much business on such a day.
But no, we pushed along to the river, noticing out of one eye Australian Dream, best described as an Australian stuff shop. We of course had to go in and have a look around, but it was quite disappointing - not even a chance to stock up on our Vegemite supplies, although we could have paid large sums of cash for Violet Crumbles, VB or of course didjeridoos, boomerangs and kangaroo signs galore. The signs were even in French!
Not much further along was famous Shakespeare & Co. bookshop, positioned just back from the water right in the middle of town. This English-language book shop has been running for fifty years or so, and is the brain-child of one guy who just collected a random assortment of obsolete books. In the end, after an hour or so I had to drag Liz out of the shop - we could have bought half the books in there - every second one one or both of us said "Hey, I've always wanted to read that". For now, books are dead weight that we can best avoid.
More pleasant strolling finally found us at the object of the afternoon's wanderings - Musee d'Orsay. We didn't really know what it housed, but the fact that it was set in an 1900s train station was enough to get our tourist dollars and be our token musem for the city. The queue proceeded much faster than expected, and after the lady actually looked in our backpack (she gave up looking for bombs when she saw our beanies and baguettes!), we checked it into the cloakroom and went wandering.
Having pretty much no idea what to expect turned out to be a good thing. There was plenty of same-ish art, sculpture and the like, but then we found some really interesting things. First was a small collection of Gaudi pieces, fresh in our mind after seeing so much in Barcelona. Next was an amusingly-named artist whom neither of us had ever heard of called Camille Pissarro. We both profess to not really appreciate art much at all, nor know much about it, but his impressionist works had both of us, independently, captivated.
The building itself was suitably impressive, and there were lots of other rooms, too much to take in even if we had have had more than an hour and a half before closing time to look around.
Hunger had come yet again, and we decided to walk back to the dingy part of town we found last night, up on Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis in 10e. The long walk felt almost normal after so much, yet our bodies don't really stop complaining - my knees and Liz's back. We consoled ourself with some cheap Chinese at the far end of the street, but it was no match on the stuff we get at home, had in Singapore or indeed Jono and Penny had in China.
We had originally intended to have a stop in a cheap pub or two, but we were exhausted. Just enough energy (and will to save money and keep fit) remained to propel us on the walk back down to the crappy expensive hostel, where we are spending the evening doing some long-overdue journal catchup.

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