Paris, Day One

This weekend we completed our trilogy of visits to Really Big, Important Cities: New York, London, and now Paris.

We left Ipswich late Thursday morning, taking a train to London and a Tube to Waterloo Station where we queued for and boarded the Eurostar to Paris.



Five minutes from departure, we were told we'd be delayed because of a technical difficulty. Later, we were informed we'd need to leave the train altogether. Fortunately, we were able to just cross the platform to another train; we all retained our seats and were delayed only half an hour.

We left London fairly slowly. Going under the Channel only took 20 minutes. And we sped up quite a bit through the French countryside (I mostly remember fields and power lines) - it's the fastest I've ever gone on a train, easily twice the speed of auto traffic we saw, and perhaps the speed of some small aircraft.

Then came the Paris suburbs, where I noticed a lot of graffiti and concrete tower blocks, and remembered the rioting. We arrived at Gare du Nord and looked for a cash machine, but could only find one in the whole station, which was fairly mobbed. Then a very long taxi queue - long enough that some had made reservations; probably a 20 minute wait. The neighbourhood looked a bit dodgy too with some sex shops and guys asking for money, so all in all it wasn't exactly a warm welcome. This was our second trip to a non-English-speaking country, but we felt more like outsiders here than in the Netherlands.

We arrived at our hotel in the Montmarte neighbourhood, which is the Mount Tabor of Paris: you can do a nice uphill hike to see a grand view of the city. First we had dinner in a café around the corner. The concierge told us the name of a café nearby that had been in the film Amelie but we forgot the name later and didn't find it.



There were plenty to choose from; we ate at the one in the centre right, outside on the street. We did okay ordering (as well as checking in) so far: we knew enough French to say please, thank you, sorry, hello, goodbye, yes, no, and count to three, and even so most of the people we talked to spoke English also. It's amazing how much French you don't realize you know - lots of English words come from the French, and the Latin roots are often familiar. Margo's encyclopedic knowledge of gastronomy was also invaluable. Dinners were in three courses: an entrée (more a starter than what we consider an entree to be), a plat (the main dish) and a dessert. I had a quiche, antouille sausage, and créme caramel. Margo had boeuf (beef) and the tarte du jour. Sarah had a ham sandwich in a baguette and chocolate mousse. We drank glasses of Bordeaux, which seemed the most common red wine available.

After dinner, we made the walk uphill to the front of Sacré-Cœur Basilica.



This is the highest natural point in Paris. And from the front, here is the view, our first overlook of the City of Light:



We walked back through a touristy collection of cafés and bars. Everything was open late, unlike what we'd become accustomed to in the UK. And perhaps we were early, but there was easy seating everywhere. Hawkers prowled the streets selling flowers and offering to do quick portraits, and accordion players would wander from table to table playing and expecting payment, but still it was undeniably romantic: the cafés, wine, lights, and music in the air.

This was the view from our room. Lots of Paris looks like this: white buildings with no spaces between, all a uniform 4-5 stories, with windows that swing in and flowers on the windowsills.