Innocents Abroad: October 3
Master of the House
Monday morning commute traffic into Paris wasn't as bad as one might imagine although our excitement at finally arriving may have tempered our judgment.
It was quite a spectacular sight rounding a curve in St Cloud and seeing the Eiffel Tower high above the City of Light.
With only a few wrong turns, we got to the Trois Colleges, our hotel in the Latin Quarter.
When we had checked into the hotel, he took some of the bags up to the room while I watched the other bags.
He found the room would hold us, or our bags, but not both!
The hotel had nothing bigger available so we stacked everything in the room and headed out on foot to see if we could find anything bigger.
The problem was that we were to be in Paris for ten days and few places had any rooms available for that many consecutive nights as this was the fall fashion show time in Paris and everything good was booked months in advance.
We had reserved at the Trois Colleges because our first choices were already booked for the same reason. It hadn't been easy to book by long distance phone or fax, and was just as difficult on foot and face-to-face. But we lucked out and were able to find a room for nine nights at the Crystal Hotel. Actually, it was a very nice spacious room and we were happy it had only taken a couple hours to find it. We were to stay at the first place that night and then move to the Crystal on Tuesday.
That crisis ended, we set out on foot to explore the city.
Two of the city's most famous cafes are just around the corner. Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots were both popular with intellectuals and literary figures like Hemingway, and continue to be packed all day and night. The Parisians love outdoor cafes and will sit for hours. Of course, so do the tourists. We didn't try these two because they have become so touristy that the tables are jammed so close together that it's hard to pick up your drink without elbowing the person next to you.
Next we headed to Ile de la Cité, an island in the middle of the river where the city was born. It was first inhabited by some Celtic tribes, one of which, the Parisii, gave the town it's name. The island was a primitive village when Julius Caesar showed up to take over in 53 BC. Things took off from there. Our first stop was Sainte-Chapelle, a beautiful Gothic cathedral with magnificent stained glass windows. We saw an exhibit showing the history of the Paris police at the Prefecture of Police, which I remembered from my firstshort visit in 1967. Rain began to fall so we ducked into Notre Dame, still huge, still dark, still awesome; but with a lot more people than I remembered. One thing that struck me was how many more people the were everywhere in 1994 compared to 1967. Tourism, especially from the U.S., was not really common back then...much more expensive compared to today. And much of Europe was still recovering from the war. I can remember many places with the rubble of war still evident in vacant blocks. But, today, lots of people, including us.
After the rain let up (the rest of our vacation would be mostly sunny), we walked through the Tuilleries Gardens to the Place de la Concorde where one finds the Obelisk given to Paris by Muhammed Ali (the guy from Egypt, not Louisville). On up the famous Champs Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe. Picked up some tickets at an agency and began to go back as it was beginning to get dark. We passed the presidential palace, the Palais de l'Elysee, which has so much security around it nobody could get close. Then along Rue St Honore, past the Place Vendome, into an ice cream parlor, past the Louvre, across the river to the Latin Quarter, and to our tiny room for the night.
