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Paris: Day 2
August 1st, 2007 at 11:06
I can’t believe how much we did yesterday. We must have seen almost everything in Paris, apart from perhaps the inevitable suburban riots and unionised Frenchmen doing some actual work.
Our first visit of the day was to the Arc Du Triumph, which is surprisingly massive. Its in the middle of a gigantic roundabout that has approximately fifty lanes of traffic and no road markings. I think Parisian roundabouts work on a system where by you filter on to the roundabout whenever, and it’s a free-for-all as you fight for survival. Luckily, we didn’t have to cross the road to get there – there was an poorly lit underpass full of tourists.
Next up, we walked down the Champs Elysee, which was full of some very expensive looking shops – not the useful kinds of shops though, as they all looked like women’s clothes shops. We stopped for some food near to a man who was standing about whistling tunes in the style of pigeons. He was trying to hawk some sort of bird whistle, so played a number of recognisable tunes in (pun-alert!) pigeon English. JD, ever the obvious tourist with his ‘Paris’ t-shirt, shorts and sandals, was taken in by this and bought one. I haven’t seen him use it yet, although they’ll be a YouTube video when he does.
We continued down the CdE, meandering through one of the various jardins that are invariably actually the roof of an underground car park, passing the seating that had been set up for the Tour de France. I think we went past the Elysee Palace, but I’ve really no idea – there were some fancy gates, so they must have been in front of something important.
At the bottom of the Champs Elysee is the Place de la Concorde, which is where two hundred years ago they guillotined the Royal Family, and set in motion the chain of events that would lead to not only the American revolution and republican democracy around the world, but a boom in sales for guillotine salesmen.
From the PdlC, you get the most incredible view. The French National Assembly on one side, the Louvre on another, the Arc De Triumph and the Grand Arch de Defence and the Eiffel Tower. This was also surrounded by what was probably the most dangerous roundabout in the world. In the middle, rather than have a guillotine set up, just in case the French Royal Family try and organise another rebellion, there’s a big Egyptian Obelisk, which is incredible to look at. It’s surprisingly big and covered in hieroglyphics. I would give it 9/10.
We kept walking in the same direction through the jardins and ended up in front of the Louvre. Its a massive building and visually very impressive. Sitting outside, we wondered whether or not to go to the Louvre, the busiest, biggest and most famous art gallery in the world. The consensus amongst the publique generalé seems to be “tsk, you can’t see it all in day” “you’ll never get in because its always busy” “it takes ages to see the Mona Lisa”. Even so, we decided to go in with only four hours until closing time – on the basis that none of us are art critics and there’s going to be a lot of “filler” material, we’d only need a few hours. So we went in.
At about three o’clock in the afternoon on a monday, the queue was incredibly short. We couldn’t have queued for any longer than two minutes. First of all we did the most obvious thing and went to try and see the Mona Lisa, just like every other tourist ever. It had its own sign posts.
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The Mona Lisa has glass in front of it, and it is mounted on what I assume is some sort of security device. There were hundreds of tourists all standing around trying to push their way to the front to see it – although its not like they hadn’t seen it before. It was quite surreal, as no one could give a damn about the other paintings, yet get the one from the Da Vinci code on the wall and everyone is dying to see it.
It was pretty good though – someone said to me that seeing it is exciting because you’re seeing something so famous, not because of the actual artistic ability, which were distinctly average. I’m sure Da Vinci’s use of light in paintings was revolutionary at the time, but these days we have photos that do much the same thing.
The other wing of Louvre, over the other side of the courtyard was practically empty (slight exaggeration). The best thing it had to boast was a load of old Persian carpets and Islamic pots. One thing it did have were some old timey Mesopotamian statues – they were incredible.
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The Louvre was pretty good – much better than the Tate Modern, in that the paintings actually looked like the things that they’re supposed to be.
We left the Lourve via the secret underground shopping centre – which had a Virgin Megastores underneath the lovely jardin above. Which was a bit bizarre if you were expecting the grave of Mary Magdalene instead.
Aprés the Louvre, we went to Monmatre, which is the location of the Sacre Coeure, which is basically a massive church built by French aristocrats to “expiate the crimes” of the socialist-commune government. Its on the top of a massive hill – to get to the top you can take a funicular – which rather than being merely a tourist gimmick, is actually marked on the metro map and is compatible with metro tickets.
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At the bottom of the hill there appears to be some con-artists in permanent residence. Apparently the scam is that they go up to tourists and tie a piece of string around their fingers… and sell them the string. And probably try to pick-pocket them at the same time.
The inside of the church was pretty predictable: it was basically a bunch of Catholics being wrong, but they were happy so we left them to it. The view from the top of the hill gives you an ace view of the Paris skyline.
Next, as it was getting dark, we went to the Eiffel Tower and incredibly, seemed to get lucky with the lines again. We only had to queue for about half an hour, which is pretty good when you consider that everyone you talk to about the Eiffel Tower who has usually been there tends to recoil in horror when you tell them you just want to look at it, because there’s so many tourists that the tower isn’t even reflecting or emitting enough photons to be seen properly without flickering.
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We went to the second floor on the basis that it wouldn’t be as expensive or busy as the top. Perhaps the most startling revelation is that it turns out that I appear to suffer from vertigo when being really, really high up. I’m assuming its because you’re not behind a sheet of glass and theoretically you could fall. I mean, if there were an earthquake that throws you over the high barriers.
The view was incredible you could see everything. The most surprising thing though was the cost of a Coke there. I was expecting a “grande” Coke to be 330ml and cost about half a million pounds, yet it turns out that the Eiffel Tower’s definition of large is approximately the same size as a cinema Coke. Not bad value, really.
After getting down from the Eiffel Tower it was just after midnight, and we had to act fast to catch the Metro – which finished running at half 12. After faffing about for about 15 minutes trying to find the metro station, we got on a train to find people playing music on the train. It seemed very French. It wasn’t until they went around afterwards begging for money that it because obvious what their hidden motive was. Here’s a video:
We arrived at the Latin Quarter to find the most incredible thing: a dance battle. Just in the street like – there were a group of people with a stereo and two men trying to out-do each other at dancing whilst a sizeable crowd watched. It was a bit embarrassing as one bloke was shit hot doing flips and spinning and wearing a jaunty hat, whilst the other was just a bit rubbish.
We made our way to a Jazz Club that JD and Fundar wanted to go to. There was some sort of “swing” band on and they played the sort of twenty minute long songs you’d expect at a jazz club. The barman also had the ability to throw glass bottles around a catch them.
We stayed there until around half-two, when we caught the night-bus home. At 3am. In the centre of Paris. It was a bit scary.
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