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ewx16th. Transport was terrible; the trains were OK but the bus in Cambridge was late and the taxi across London got stuck in traffic. We ran the length of Waterloo arriving about half an hour after checkin opened, and were nearly the first people into our carriage.
The hotel was down a markety street and was perfectly pleasant. We wandered down to the Arc de Triomphe to walk off a day spent in seats. The traffic there is completely insane.
We headed back to the hotel and then out to find dinner, in this case at a Moroccan restaurant down the road and round the corner from the hotel, communicating in a kind of mutual Franglais. I had a rather nice lamb kebab.
17th. We took the metro to the Hôtel de Ville which was somewhat surrounded by tents and fencing, but I attempted a couple of photos anyway. We then went across the bridge to Notre Dame, where photography was an easier proposition. The polarizer helped in both cases.
Next stop was Sainte Chapelle, a 13th century chapel built to house relics ostensibly retrieved from the Holy Land. You have to go through the Palais de Justice, and associated security theatre, to get in.
The lower chapel is pretty enough but nothing very special. The upper chapel however has vast stained glass windows, which it is hard to do real justice to photographically.
Naath found a cheat sheet for the windows, which apparently are a collection of Bible stories, and picked out David slaying Goliath.
The rose at the western end depicts the Book of Revelations.
We found somewhere to have coffee just over the street and then headed southwards.
Our target was the museum at the Hôtel de Cluny, which is built on the site of now-excavated Gallo-Roman baths. (What makes them Gallo-Roman rather than just Roman?) We saw the Dame et Licorn and speculated on the larcenous nature of monkeys and wondered why the unicorn had shrunk so much in one of the panels. Along the way we stopped for more photography in the Place St Michel.
We walked back along the river bank and crossed to reached the Louvre. Naath by now presumably getting quite bored of my habit of stopping to photograph things, though Mum had the advantage of her own camera to occupy the time.
I'm not sure what this young lady is doing.
The weather was looking somewhat ominous by this time, though I don't recall it actually raining at any point.
I know the pyramid at the Louvre is rather controversial but personally I approve of it. Once you go in (more security theatre) the space below is quite reminiscent of the central court at the British Museum.
We saw, well; the Venus de Milo, the code of Hammurabai (specifically an instance of it looted by the Elamites and then, ah, acquired by the French), and some rather entertaining lions, while wondering through the Iranian/Mesopotamian/Levantine collection with Naath.
Yes, this chap is really a lion, not a frog. The eyes make me feel he wouldn't look out of place in a manga however.
The oldest thing was saw was a rather nondescript carved lump of something from around 4200BCE. As in the British Museum there was lots of Assyrian antiquities, many of them five-legged (so they make sense from two directions without being carved all the way through). I don't get the impression that Assyrian sculptors were the world's most imaginative.
This holiday was the first time Naath and Mum met.
Unfortunately Naath lost her Jomscarf, and lost property denied all knowledge both on the day and the following morning.
We headed back to the hotel for a read and a doze. Naath: “ew, you covered me in my slobber”. Seemed fair enough to me under the circumstances. We found a fairly stylish little restaurant, I had a terrine for a starter, a chicken dish that I didn't make any further notes on for the main course and a remarkably dense chocolate cake after. We accompanied the meal with a rather pleasant alsatian Riesling. Again with the mutual Franglais, the staff having fairly idiomatic English and Naath and I getting by with restaurant French (Mum's French is rather better).
18th. We started by heading back to the Louvre but they still hadn't seen Naath's scarf. The extra transport was no extra cost, having acquired a Paris Visite ticket which would get us anywhere in zones 1-3 for the duration of our stay. (We also bought Museums+Monuments card to get into things quickly and freely, though I think we ended up down on that deal.)
We headed straight over to the Eiffel Tower. Given the choice between queuing ages for a lift, or tramping up endless stairs, we decided to stay at the bottom. The thing is seriously big.
We pottered up in the direction of the École Militaire taking photos at various points. Naath resorted to her book while Mum and I took photos.
While having a coffee we spotted some people riding hired Segways. Some were more happy with this unusual vehicle than others.
We made our way back to the Metro and thence into central Paris for a look at the Centre Pompidou. The first distraction here was a collection of bizarre sculptures, some of them animated, in an adjacent pool.
This one rotates and squirts. You tell me.
I don't think the layout that made this shot possible was accidental; Paris is full of things that line up nicely in a way that I've just not spotted in London (though to be fair I've not pottered around London looking for photographs in the same way).
Outside the centre is a large square, in which we were accosted by a caricaturist.
The results of the caricature are still trapped on paper, but since I was instructed to smile in a particular direction, Naath took the opportunity for a photograph.
Apparently I have a Danish nose. My Dad's from Lincolnshire, so a bit of Viking DNA isn't beyond the bounds of plausibility.
A large golden cup. I don't know, either.
This image makes me seasick. I like it, it's just the kind of thing I wanted out of the Centre Pompidou, but I can't look at it for too long.
Oddly I'd only seen black and white images of this building before, probably in French textbooks at school, so I'd not realized it was pleasingly colorful as well as festooned with pipes.
It's actually a museum of modern art. It'd be quite funky to live there, though.
We had lunch, in my case a confit de canard, at a rather nice (I think) VIetnamese-owned Franco-Chinese restaurant in the Places Pigalle, and wondered about the unusual punctuation of “Follie's de Pigalle” across the road; and then took the funiculaire up to Sacré Coeur, a 19th century cathedral in Monmartre.
Photography was not allowed inside. The stained glass varies from the not very interesting to quite pretty stuff that's inspired by medieval versions and while perhaps more technically detailed, didn't seem quite as lively to me. I spotted a painting of Jean d'Arc with her horse trampling a (presumably English) Lion; the martial references in this cathedral are perhaps a hint as to the French mood following the defeat of 1870?
The front is an excellent (and very popular) location for looking out over Paris. Saint Vincent de Paul:
The Centre Pompidou again.
We made our way through Monmartre in the general direction of its famous cemetery, stopping at a museum of Dali's works. You can probably imagine just how weird this was; the piece I found most memorable was a small reproduction of the Venus de Milo in blue glass with added drawers. (The kind you open to put things in, not the kind you wear.) There were a couple of dozen Dali works actually on sale, I decided not to ask the price.
Once we'd had some coffee it was getting dark so back we headed. After a bit of a rest we engaged in a lengthy traipse looking for somewhere mutually acceptable to eat, eventually finding a small bistro fairly nearly our hotel. Not unreasonable Naath ordered her steak “rare, but not English-rare”, and seemed happy with what she got. The Beaujolais Nouveau having arrived in Paris the same day we did, we decided to have a bottle of it with the meal. Pleasant though unchallenging l-)
19th. Not much to say, we made it to the Gare du Nord in good time, the queue for checkin was lengthy but fast-moving, the transport all basically behaved.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 08:55 pm (UTC)She's executing a good slide tackle.
If there is any justice, Blue Man Group (http://www.blueman.com/) will perform at the Centre Pompidou.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 10:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-21 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 09:01 pm (UTC)Est-ce que le Centre Pompidou == Centre Pickpocket, still? When we went there most of us just gravitated towards the café on the 4(?)eme floor while the weirdos in the group actually looked around.
Some intrepid chaps from the flying club had planned to hop over to Le Touquet on the 16th to pick up some Beaujolais ... alas, they were stymied by the weather here in Blighty.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 09:02 pm (UTC)Looks like you had good light. What better thing to wish on a photographer...
d'oh
Date: 2006-11-20 09:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 09:40 pm (UTC)I've not been to Paris for five years and I'm jealous.
(If I'd had to have guessed I'd have said that was a photo of Naath's mum, not yours. So much for family resemblances.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 10:10 pm (UTC)Ewx - thank you for bringing back my lovely Parisian memories :) If I'm right, your hotel is near the route I used to walk from where I lived near the Trocadero up to Montmartre, via the Parc Monceau. Nice area :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 11:47 pm (UTC)Alas, the scale models in the gift shop were extortionately priced. )-8
I'm a huge fan of Paris. Frankly, though ewx's photography is very fine as usual, I don't quite see the Paris I love in those photos. I'm beginning to suspect I respond to the city in quite a personal and unusual way — having grown up in London and left never to return, I can't think of any large cities except Paris in which I'd consider living.
a photo of Naath's mum
Date: 2006-11-21 04:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-20 11:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-21 12:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-21 02:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-21 11:02 am (UTC)-m-