Adventures Part 11: Paris

Ta da! The final set of vignettes from my French adventures.

After four days of rain and chateaus, I said goodbye to Brice and Patricia and headed to Paris. As I mentioned above, it quickly became a particularly horrible day combining all of the worst aspects of traveling, and it is best left as a story told over some good wine and food.

But I finally made it to my hotel located in a normal, working class neighborhood in the heart of Paris. The place has a one-star rating, but keep in mind that it is all relative. The towels were so old and stiff (resembling flat loofahs, basically) that I wouldn't even have used them to clean the floor (which wasn't all that clean anyway). And my room was on the third floor up a tortuously winding staircase that was so narrow that I had to turn my suitcase to the side to get it around the corners.

Standing on my landing looking straight down the staircase in the hotel.

But the bathroom was at least free of obvious signs of previous occupants, the water was hot, and the radiator worked. And I was just a 30-minute walk from the Louvre, my goal for these last few days. All in all, considering the central location, a good value for the money.

I.M. Pei's glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre.

I spent two full days in the Louvre. By the end of the second day, the ice that had encased Paris had mostly melted and I was utterly done with museums and artifacts and art.

I took very few pictures in the Louvre even though it was allowed. This marble caught my eye.

Odd detail from a 16th century tapestry! Somebody had better check what that poor dog's been eating!

The Louvre is an amazing place. The galleries and hallways just go on and on, every corner, wall, and ceiling crammed and encrusted with things too look at.

I spent my last two days walking around window shopping and people watching. I didn't take any pictures. And I didn't buy a single trinket. Instead, I practiced my French on the Parisians every chance I could. Either I was just really lucky or they needed the trade because it was the off season, but just like the French people in the boonies to the south, the Parisians were relatively tolerant of my mangling their language.

View of Ile de la Cite and the Seine. The sky was grey and it was cold and windy...but at least it wasn't snowing or raining.

I completely forgot which bridge this is but the fences on both sides had hundreds of padlocks of various kinds attached to them. Many of the padlocks had messages engraved on them: AB loves MN, that sort of thing. I heard some French guy tell some tourists that the locks are cut off daily. I don't think that's true because some of them had been there long enough to become rusty, but you get the basic idea.

The four days I was in Paris I made like a Parisian and carried my plastic shopping bag with me so each afternoon on the way back to the hotel I would stop in at the charcuterie for sausage, at the fromagerie for cheese, at the marche for fruit, at the boulangerie for bread, and of course I'd pick up a bottle of wine somewhere along the way.

Dinner!

At last I got in the taxi, headed to the airport, and flew home so I could rest up for a couple of days from my fabulous month of adventures.