It's been a hectic fortnight, even for a lycanthrope like me. Aside from the fact it was my birthday (which I celebrated by promptly falling ill), I also managed to squeeze in a 4 day trip to Paris. Ah Paree; the city of food and love and unshaven pits. This was my first time visiting, so the few days before our visit were spent in a frenzy of planning and preparation. After all, we just had four days, and we needed to squeeze everything in. We had decided to travel on the Eurostar rail rather than a flight, and so had to get to London Waterloo to catch our train.
Our story opens on friday night, when, batteries charged and memory sticks empty, we caught the late night bus to London. I wedged myself into the most comfortable position, and managed to doze off while the bus driver meandered aimlessly through every village between Norwich and Stanstead.
Day 1 - A view from the top
I woke up just as the bus entered London, and I have to reiterate my belief that London is one of the most beautiful cities at night. The station at Waterloo was unexpectedly crowded. After getting through all the check in procedures, and after a brief, though violent tussle for the window seat (which I lost), we were finally rolling on our way to France. At this point of time everyone (I was travelling with four others) except me promptly fell asleep.
Finally we emerged form the Eurostar tunnel and voila, we were in France. I look keenly through the window, eager to see women wearing skimpy elegant outfits as on FTV, or perhaps villagers spontaneously surrendering, but much to my disappointment, the landscape looked very much like England.
As we pulled into
Gare du Nord, I got my first glimpse of one of the landmarks we were going to visit -
Sacre Cour or the Sacred Heart Church, which overlooks most of Paris. Well we hurried out and bought metro tickets for the next three days (the Paris metro though a bit grungier than the London Underground, is quite efficient), and then headed off to
Montparnasse to check into our hotel. A quick wash and change, and we were off to Montemarte to climb the dozens of stairs to the church.
Sacre Cour is built on the one hill in Paris and as you ascend, Paris unfolds in font of you. From the skyscrapers of La Defence to the Golden Dome of Napoleon's tomb, the city opens opens up like a book. The church itself is really beautiful with minaret type domes and vaulted ceilings, and a trip to the top should be really worth the climb. However, chicken that we were, we satisfied ourselves by oohing and aahing from below.
We then decided to visit the
Madeleine which is another church, but a typically roman one this time, with huge columns all around. And from the top of the stairs the
Place de la Concorde can be seen.
A short walk down the
Rue Royale and you reach the Concorde with its
Obelisk of Luxor, ornate fountains and view of the
Arch de Triumph, and
Asemblee Nationale.
And then we we
re off to our last stop of the day, you guessed it, the
Eiffel Tower. As we turned the corner, the iron monstrosity suddenly reared high, and I understood why so many prominent parisians had campaigned to bring it down. But I guess its here to stay now, and has and will remain one of Paris's most recognizable monuments.
The tower has three floors, the first full of resteraunts, the second with souvenir shops and cafes and finally the third which is at the very top. You can climb stairs to the second floor, but we opted to go via lift to the top (after waiting about two hours in various queues), but boy was it worth it.
We timed our visit just as the sun was setting so we got to see Paris by day, and as the sunlight slowly faded, we got to see the myriad of lights coming on one by one all over the city, till it shone like a gilded spider's web. When night fell, two giant beams of light shot out from the tower and started rotating around it. after peering down the tower for a couple of hours, we headed down, but not before using the toilet right at the top (what a waste of plumbing).
We got down just in time to see the hourly 'sparking', where bright blue bulbs flicker on and off for a few minutes, giving the whole tower the general appearance of a roman candle. In the gardens in front of the Eiffel, we found a great many 'desis' fron the Indian subcontinent hawking wine and replicas of the Eiffel.
We were pretty much tired out by this this time, so we decided to head back to our hotel and call it a day, but not before grabbing a few slices of pizza at the nearby takeaway. I'm quite ashamed to admit to eating pizza in France, but these were really excellent.
Have a look at the slideshow below to see a few more pictures of our first day.
