There was a slight apprehension about visiting Paris – expectations of a million references in books, movies, conversations with friends and of course a lack of anything resembling french vocabulary, one which would apparently horrify the stubborn french who would refuse, in my imagination, to speak english.
I had, it turned out, nothing to worry about. My hostel was in a lovely area filled with typically french amazing specialty stores – cheese, fruit, poultry, chocolate – filled with slightly serious but friendly french faces happy to speak english when ‘yes, please’ came out as ‘ja, danke’.
The weather wasn’t quite so pleasant. Admittedly I expected bitterly cold winds and rain in Scotland, but certainly not France in summer. C’est La Vie. After a quiet afternoon wandering the local area and an early night, I saved my eneregy for the three days I had to squeeze in the spectacles of Paris.
The following day I walked to the Eiffel Tower, past amazing food and clothes markets, and once I saw the steel monstrocity it hit me – I was in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower – wow. True, it is ugly, as the Harbour Bridge is, full of steel crossbars and bolts, but it is such a powerful image you don’t care and the view is amazing, a jigsaw of boulevards and old buildings, that bizzare combination of grey and green only truly old cities have.
After returning to street level, I caught the metro to the Arc de Triomphe, which was beautiful and surrounded by the infamous traffic of the giant roundabout surrounding it. Not as bad as Asia, but not something to navigate if you valued your life, certainly. The rain had stopped and I was able to walk down the Avenue Des Champs-Elysees all the way, past the biggest Louis Vuitton store in the world (sigh), window shopping with thousands of others across the Seine to the Musee D’Orsay.
The museum was amazing – not so big that you couldn’t wander through it entirely, but with enough rooms to keep you busy for the afternoon. Seeing Monet’s blue waterlillies was like being starstruck again – wow – and I, who doesn’t usually appreciate it, was lost in art for hours.
-Sarah
Sarah