Oh la la (Still not sure what that means or if it is appropriate)

To be honest, I wasn't necessarily jazzed about a trip to Paris.  I've never been interested in France, never planned on going and I'm a bit worn out on huge cities.  I was in for a big surprise.

I loved Paris.  The city, the architecture, the people, the parks, the HISTORY.  Everywhere you turned there was something of significance, an old church, a gorgeous park, a familiar monument.  The weather was flawless and Parisians were out it full force to enjoy the weather.  

The trip started off on the right foot.  Some snafu on the part of the airline had me without a seat so they bumped me to Business Class.  Hello movies, lay flat seats and super heated peanuts and beer for the whole 8 hours.  As a note, "Lone Survivor" is not a great movie for relaxing and getting sleep on the plane.  

The first day we got in to settle ourselves and a coworker and I walked down to the Arc de Triomphe. He told me the joke about why there were trees planted on both sides of the Avenue des Champs-Elysees (so the Germans had shade to walk in when they invaded during WWII).  I also thought I saw a frog on the sidewalk, which meant I had to stop and investigate.  He said, "You are surrounded by frogs."  So now you know the sort of non-French positive company I was working with...  Anyway, we walked down to the Arc and it was amazing.  Quite large and in the middle of an epic traffic circle, it dominated the landscape.  Fantastic.

The day was short, but I did lay eyes on the Eiffel Tower from a distance.  Intrigue was starting to kick in.  The next day we did some work in the morning and then took the later portion of the afternoon to get settled in at the hotel.  Why get settled in when there is a big mysterious city out there to explore?!  An important note here is that the sun was rising at 0345 and setting at approximately 2230.  This gave us long days for exploring after work.  With that in mind, I set off to see my primary travel interest in Paris, the Catacombs.  So I hustled across town on foot, map in hand, and ran into a protest.  This protest went on for 9 days.  You always knew you were getting close when you started seeing law enforcement gathering in helmets, shields and body armor.  Oh Paris, how unromantic you can be.  The protested put up a good show, as did law enforcement and I rerouted (recalculating, recalculating).

Seriously, this is how I felt...

Does it seem dark?  Well, it was!!!

 

Made it to the Catacombs, barely got in for the tour under the wire and there I was.  I have wanted to see a Catacomb since college.  A brief scoop on the Catacombs:  older parts of Paris were built using stone quarried from under the city.  This left an array of empty tunnels under the city.  At some point, progress dictated that cemeteries be relocated to these underground passages to make room for more construction, expansion, etc.  So, they disentered the bones, moved them underground, labeled the stacks of bones by cemetery and ta-da, Catacombs.  It started out interesting, but quickly faded to creepy.  The good news about being one of the last ones to start the tour for the day is that you nearly have the Catacombs to yourself.  The bad part about being one of the last is that you are essstially alone!  I got the heebee jeebees so bad my rate of walking increased substantially.  I tried to be not strange, but keep pace with some French folks.  I think I was full on strange and they created distance...  So, what was creepy?  When you determine that you are in the midst of thousands and thousands of disinterred, dismembered, old skeletons, well, that isn't a recipe for happy vibes.  The other creepy element was the tunnels that were gated off, but unlit.  So you had to scoot by them, deciding whether to peer into total darkness and risk seeing glowing eyeballs or something that may take your soul.  (Shudder...)  So it was amazing, I'm glad I went, likely not to go back.  

Once I came back above ground, I headed back to the Seine.  The city seemed a bit like New Orleans.  Geography was dictacted to some extent by the proximity or position in relation ot the river.  Low and behold, I stumbled into the Notre Dame Cathedral.  Flying buttresses and all.  It was beautiful and ancient looking.  I was fortunate to catch a mass in progress.  This was great opportunity to rest, take a deep breath and really embrace the fact that I was a third of the way around the world and free to move about.  

 

After a busy evening, I found a floating creperie on the Seine and purchased my first real French food.  The handsome young man made one fresh, I sat on the boat and watched traffic go by on the river.  Life was very very good. After a day in the city, these were my knee jerk observations:

People are generally friendly wherever you may go.  

There are two dominant smells in Paris: Roses and Cigarettes.

Scooters are cool there, or at least a very common form of transportation and Piaggio MP3s are fairly common as well.  

There are a lot of old churches.

The architecture is worth taking a second look at.  

 

Work took us to the Palace of Versailles (more on that later) and the Musee Rodin.  All I can say about Rodin, is there were a lot of naked statues.  Hmmm.  Once we knocked off for the day, I set off on another walking quest.  This one would take me uphill the whole way.  I was aiming for the Montemarte district in the north part of the city.  I happened across the Moulin Rouge.  It was neat, but I was not wowed.  I continued onto the Montemarte Cemetery.  It is all above ground and a map was needed to navigate.  One challenge was the limited number of entrances to the cemetery.  It was a sprawling landscape and exuded peace and calm.  

 

 

The Sacred Heart Church (Sacre-Coeur) was my next goal.  It is one of the highest points of the city, if not the highest and boasted a stair climb of over 300 steps (read as: tight spiral staircase of doom) to get to the top.  Prior to the climb I stopped for some giant macaroons.  The energy was needed.  The view was great!  You could see the whole city and the Eiffel Tower in sweeping vistas.  The crypt below the church was also interesting, but not a show stopper.  The Basilica was amazing and just another example of the intense detail in all of the historic structures I had an opportunity to see.  

 

After spending time at an amazing place of worship, I proceeded to the sex district of Montemarte.  It was what you might imagine and quite visually intriguing.  

 

I stopped by the grocery on the way home, took my dinner in the park and did a bit of journaling.  My dinner for the rest of the week consisted of the following: baguette, cheese, blueberry yogurt, fresh fruit and raw nuts.  It may not sound amazing, but it was good clean food and easy to get.  The park provided ample people watching opportunities and I made use of the scattered chairs throughout the grounds.  

At this point, my journal says "LOVE PARIS."  I guess I fully had the bug by them and had figured out how to fit in.  On the way home from the grocery, an American stopped me, butched some French and  after I had helped her family with directions to a close restaurant, she said, "Hmph, I thought you were French, you know, because you were carrying fresh bread." This was a fellow American...face palm.

After sitting a bit, fighting with the WIFI, because I really wanted to watch Aristocats on Netflix I decided I needed to see the Eiffel Tower light up at night.  I did a little research and the web said I needed to check it out at night, but specifically on the hour.  So I waited until 2230, put on some pants and stumbled around the corner to were I could get a good look at it.  It was late, but so worth it.  On the hour it did sparkle.  Although the "sparkle" display only lasts 5 minutes, to see the city fully alive at night, tour boats cruising the Seine, late night bicycle tours, couples murmuring in awe at the view, the romance, was prime.  Paris at night was a different beast, but a pleasant one and very, very much busy.  

 

On the 5th day (our only real whole day off), I decided I needed to go see the Bastille area.  Although the prison is no longer there from the July 14th French Holiday, I wanted to at least go and see where part of that revolution took place.  So heading East from the center of the city. I started with the famous hot chocolate at Angelina's.  It is thick, rich and amazing.  Booyah.  Feeling fortified, I charged forth, stopped at a few open air markets and saw the Bastille monument.  I wasn't wowed, but Viva le Bastille Day!  I had done some reading about the "Flea Markets of Paris."  So I needed to find one on the east side of town and settled on Montreuil.  Turns out, this is the roughest, low end, sketchy flea market I could have gone to.  That being said, being completely immersed in the local Algerian culture as an epic minority was fascinating.  We have similar markets here, but they are predeominantly Hispanic.  I survived the market, wasn't maimed, shanked or robbed and began my trip back to the city center.  

 

 

I stopped at a nice pizzaria, my standard meal out.  So on the way home, about a 4 mile walk, I got plum exhausted.  I kept making wrong turns, having to look at the map and was frankly frustrated.  On top of that, I had somewhere I wanted to be at 1900.  I finally gave up on walking and challenged the subway.  Unfortunately, my closest station was the Gare de Lyon.  It is the Penn Station of Paris.  It has trains, buses and the metro leaving from there.  So, I almost took a train (which would have gone to another country likely) and was finally directed to the underground system.  It was so gratifying to finally buy a ticket and successfully navigate to where I wanted to go.  The ride was quick, cheap and satisfying.  I took a break at the hotel and got cleaned up for my 1900 affair.  

 

A friend of mine told me about being on a river cruise and seeing people dancing on the side of the Seine.  Thanks to the internet, I looked it up and found the scoop.  There was a tango group that met fairly consistanty down the way from Notre Dame.  So I put on my dancing shoes, packed my dinner picnic and found the tango.  A very handsome young man named Stephandeau tried to teach me the tango, it was dreadful.  I got lessons from Frank, a polish man who had quit his job as a bus driver to travel the world and dance.  We danced quite a bit and then he took leave and said, I hope me meet at a dance somewhere, sometime again.  There was also an older lesbian named Laurou that kept attempting the teaching.  Her method was to hold you so close that you couldn't look at your feet.  Face palm...  Overall, my interest in the tango was waning quickly, regardless of the beautiful river view, passing boats and picnic dinner.  I decided to get up and walk around and noticed another gathering.  I heard accordians, saw lots of beer bottles and I knew the style of dance.  I FOUND FOLK DANCING! There were multiple accordians, a guitar, recorders, a tamborine and spoons.  It was perfect.  They gladly looped me in and helped me learn their dances.  I met Yann, a mechanic/engineer at Air France that happened to be the organizer for the Paris Traditional Dance Society.  Through his decent English and my willingness, we danced and danced.  Some dances were social dances where you switched partners and met everyone.  Some were more traditional and danced in pairs.  It was the best possible thing that could have happened.  What was even better, there was a full moon over the Seine, a fiddle was brought out and the dance went on and on.  Walking home, I was trying to take it all in.  It was awesome and unexpected.  This is what I wrote when I got back:

Get out of the tour bus/boat, etc and hit the streets.  There is a lot of good information on tours, but true immersion, shopping at grocery stores, talking with strangers (don't fret about language) or heck, if language fails you, dance with them.  The heart of culture is the people, everything else plays to that heart beat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a late night and amazing experience, it was one day before the bosses got on the ground.  I walked over to the Champ de Mar (the park that runs in front of the Eiffel Tower grounds) and brought an amazing dessert and some croissants.  I read a book, napped in the sun, listened to tour groups go by and watched life go on.  Some hilarious sights:

A little, red, curly haired dog running loose and being chased by his owners.  It was crowded and hilarious.  

There were any number of youngsters running about in the park.

An adjacent part of the part was hosting an interpretive dance group made up of all ages.  

There was a roving accordian player that would play for you and then want to be paid.  Awkward social situations 101.  

The best part was the epic raccoon style sunburn I got from falling asleep with my sunglasses on.  That is always a professional look...not.

 

After a perfect Parisian afternoon, I had my last solo dinner in the park by our hotel.  It consisted of cheese, bread, butter, grapes and necatrines.  

The following days were full throttle work, but a few highlights:

Standing for hours and hours in the Carrossel de Louvre while our bosses attended the conference.  There were plentiful amounts of cookies, diet coke and fresh fruit.  One kind waiter told me how beautiful I was and kept bringing me fresh apricots.  Nothing says, "I like you" like fresh fruit.  

The other highlight was taking the bosses to the Palace of Versailles for a gala.  It was grand and in the organizer's words, magical.  We arrived at the gates to a royal drum corps and full royal guard.  We were then escorted through the palace filled with people in period costumes, playing music of the time and wandering about.  Everyone was in attire appropriate of a black tie affair.  

 

Once we left the palace and spilled in the gardens, the fountains were going and drinks were flowing.  We then moved onto the Orangerie and the formal dinner and entertainment.  While we ate in the servants dungeon, there was opera and fanfare in the main hall.  It was intriguing to see the kitchen run like a battlefield, lots of yelling, lots of running.  Once we wandered back outside, the crowd ambled up a candle lined red carpet to the grand stairs that led to the lower gardens.  The fireworks were amazing.  Seemingly out of nowhere, bursts of light, and sounds and spendor.  It was amazing.  

That pretty much sums up the journey.  I recommend Paris.  It is worth it, there are endless things to see.  Get out there and see this big world!