Paris PraNaya, Day 2

Before retiring for the day on Saturday, we decided to check out from the hotel by 9 AM on Sunday and complete the Paris-on-foot expedition. We were so tired after walking for more than 20 kms that we woke up at 9:45 AM on Sunday. By the time we got ready and hit the dining hall, we saw only empty plates and glasses left unattended which meant, the breakfast time was over. My colleague had planned the itinerary for the day based on the inputs from the old man whom we met the previous day.

The first thing on our agenda was breakfast. We searched for a bakery nearby to our hotel and bought hot sandwiches. We just left the bakery and it started to drizzle. We sat in the bus stop and hogged our sandwiches, started walking again towards the first place of the day, Place des vosges. It was nice fun walking in the rain, the water was very cold; our legs were still crying with pain. We were told that there was a very nice museum in this oldest square of Paris. When we reached the place, we saw lots of shops, a church and a small museum which had a few modern art paintings displayed. Both of us were not very keen to seeing the paintings and we decided to walk
past it to the next place. The next place was a small island that is situated just beside the island in which Notre Dame church is present. We were told by the old man that this was a very quiet place and a typical Parisian colony.

The drizzling continued; so did our walk. We walked till the island of Notre Dame. There is a small road that connects the two islands, we were not able to locate that road. So, we came to the other side of the Notre Dame island and saw the map. There were about 3 roads that were leading to our island, we started walking towards the first road. We walked for more than 5 minutes but were still not able to find that road. My colleague rechecked the map to realize that we were walking in the opposite direction, thanks to my sense of direction; I had held the map upside down! He started cursing me and it started pouring heavily. We sought the shelter of a restaurant and were waiting for the rain to go away. A couple of street artists started performing break dance in the rain which helped them earn the money from the people who were waiting for the rain to stop. After a while, we continued our walk and reached the island in 5 minutes' time. This place suggested by the old man was again not what we were interested in. It had only buildings everywhere and nothing else. Small roads and small shops could be seen apart from the boring buildings. We just walked through the island to reach the other side of the river and got out of there in just 10 minutes. 2 places till then were not good. The third place suggested was the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in Montmarte. The area was quite far and we certainly could not walk at all. We reached the main road and were waiting for a taxi. A wait for 20 minutes did not even yield a single taxi on that road. Cursing our luck, we started walking down the road hoping we would get a taxi. Atlast, we spotted an empty taxi standing in a traffic signal, we ran and hopped into the taxi and showed the driver the map and told us to take him there.

This church is on top of the highest hill of Paris. The vehicles can directly go on top of the hill or people can climb the stairs from the bottom if they want. We chose the former; courtesy, the previous day's walk. The church is really huge and very beautiful. The view of the fog-filled-Paris from the top of the hill was as though we were seeing the city from almost the 1st level of Eiffel. The rule of the church was that nobody should talk or use the cameras. We walked around inside the church and sat down on the benches meant for praying. It was indeed a huge relief for both of us as we got to sit for sometime after walking for about 6 kms from morning. Sitting for more than 15 minutes we decided it was time to leave as I was a bit hungry. We came out of the church and spotted a small shop nearby where we could get something to eat. They have this dish which looks very similar to Dosa. I don't know what it is called, but it tastes very nice. The batter had a lot of beaten egg in it. He spreads the batter on the tava and tosses it just like the dosa. After it comes out of the tava, you can ask for your choice of spread on the dosa. I asked for a chocolate spread. He smeared the choco spread, rolled that 'French Dosa' and gave it to me. It cost me 2 euros. The taste was nice, something different but nothing like our own dose!

We descended the hill through the steps and walked around in Montmarte till we were hungry for lunch. There were many small restaurants which sold hot steaming pizzas. I really wanted to eat one of those by my colleague doesn't like them and we ended up in McDonald's. I bought myself a large fries and a large sprite and that was my meal. After our lunch, we spent some more time on the roads of Montmarte and hired a taxi to reach the Charles de Gaulle Airport. The driver dropped us at the international airport as we could not tell him where we exactly wanted to go. We had about an hour for our plane to depart when we reached the international terminal. We then had to take the train that runs between the airports to reach the domestic terminal. We got into the EasyJet aircraft at 6:30 PM and reached Hamburg at 8 PM. Then a taxi drive for about an hour landed us at Pali's place at Buxtehude.

2 days spent in Paris, about 30 kms of walk seeing some of the most spectacular things; what a trip it was! A perfect weekend getaway and the most successfully executed plan of mine!

Paris PraNaya, Day 1

The last weekend of my trip was nearing and I was all excited about seeing one of the most beautiful cities of the world, Paris! A colleague, also staying at Pali's place wanted to visit the city with me. Without a second thought, I just logged on to the net and booked two tickets to Paris. It cost us 150 euros both ways, pretty cheap. Pali helped us with the hotel booking. He managed to find out a hotel in the city center that charged us 32 euros per person per night. We did not know what all places were worth seeing in Paris and I sought the help of my dyaddy! Hats off to his memory, he remembered every place that he had seen way back in 1983! He gave me the list of the places and me and my colleague were all set to explore Paris.

Friday, Pali dropped us to the Hamburg airport and our low-cost EasyJet airlines took us to Paris in 1 hour and 20 minutes. The first aerial view of the Eiffel tower during the ascent was awesome. It seemed to be a very small pillar with yellow light. We reached Paris at 10:30 in the night. The Charles de Gaulle airport is probably the only airport in the world that has the runway for the flights as flyovers, over the roads of the city. What an architecture! Needless to say, even this airport is very very huge. As our aircraft landed and was taxiing towards the arrival gate, we saw the vehicles on the roads busily moving around below the runway.

After we came out near the exit gate of the terminal, the search for a taxi to reach our hotel began. There was board put up for taxis. People have to stand in a queue and wait for a taxi to come, get into the taxi and then tell them the address where we had to go. Our taxi driver was aged about 50 I think. He had worn a full suit and a long coat over it. He had white hair on his head which bald at the center. He was wearing a golden framed spectacles [like a typical Marwadi in India, the glasses on the nose]. The driver looked like a manager in a company and I really found it difficult to believe that he was a taxi driver. He saw the address where we had to go and set his foot on the accelerator and the Peugeot was soon speeding on the highway. The temperature in Paris was around 12 degrees, pretty warm I should say. The drive to the hotel 'Paris Bruxelles' took about 35 minutes. The bustling streets at 11 PM was nice to see. The roads are quite dirty in Paris when compared to Germany. I could see small paper covers, cigarette butts, wrappers of food items etc... on the roads. When I said dirty, the definition of 'dirty' slightly varies in Europe. What is 'clean' in Bangalore is 'dirty' in Paris. We reached the hotel and my colleague paid the money, the driver said 'merci' [thanks in French].

We opened the door of the hotel and were welcomed by the receptionist. He said, our room was 403 and it was in the 4th floor. The hotel was undergoing a renovation and the walls were also getting new colors on them. The smell of the wet paint was very much prevalent. We took the lift and reached the 4th floor. A small board in the lift said the maximum capacity of the lift was 4 people. Trust me, not even 3 people could stand inside the lift, it was very small and as soon as it reached the intended floor, it would stop with a loud thud and gave a feeling that it was about to crash. We located 403 and opened the door to find clothes all over the floor, the bed was not done and a couple of suitcases opened up. We locked the door back and informed the receptionist that the room was already occupied by someone else. He then apologized for his mistake and gave us the key for room 206. The room had 2 separate single beds and a small TV mounted on the wall. The windows were quite huge and another hotel was visible from the window. We switched on the TV to see if any English channels were aired. For our disappointment, only 5 channels were being telecasted, all in French.

We dropped our bags in the room and realised that we had not eaten anything from 2 PM. Kusum had packed about 6 egg sandwiches for us for dinner. Both of us did not like the sandwich and we decided to eat out. Just outside the hotel was a McDonald's, we bought a couple of burgers, coke and fries. It was about 11:45 PM and we could see a lot of people on the streets and vehicles moving around busily. Friday night! We then walked back to our hotel and were ready to sleep as we had to start early the next morning. Before sleeping, mother nature called me and I opened the door of the bathroom to relieve myself. The bathroom was not even as big as my cubicle in the office. Just after opening the door, I saw a wash basin, beside that was the WC, beside that was the smallest possible shower room. I was not even able to stretch my hand fully in the bathroom. What more could we ask for in a hotel that charged only 32 euros per night for a person! It was enough for us. We decided to leave the hotel at 8 in the morning and slept. Somehow, neither of us woke up before 8. I woke up my colleague and we were ready by 9. The hotels in the West have the concept of bed and breakfast. We went into the dining room in the 1st floor and had 2 portions of bread with butter and jam. We were also offered a glass of orange juice and hot chocolate. After the light breakfast, we asked the receptionist for a map of Paris and started day 1 of our exploration.

[This is going to be my longest post, be prepared! I have already crossed 1000 words!]

As soon as we got into the street, the first thought that I got was what would we do for lunch?! Getting vegetarian food was very difficult in Paris. So, I suggested my colleague that we would buy some bread and coke so that we don't have to search for restaurants. He agreed and we bought 6 butter croissants and a bottle of coke. We were fully set to start our adventure. We searched for Musée du Louvre in the map. It seemed to be quite near to the place where we were staying. My colleague suggested to commute by the Paris Metro. We went into a metro station and spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how to buy the tickets. None of the people around us knew English and I wanted to explore the city on foot.

So, holding the map against our faces, we saw the road that would lead us to the museum and started walking towards it. Only a few shops were open at 9:30 AM. One big difference between Germany and France as I observed was that people in France use 2 wheelers a lot, at least in Paris. I could see only a handful of bikes in Germany. But in Paris, a lot of scooters are used. The brand of the 2 wheelers widely used is Vespa. The 80's scooter in India is still being used in Paris. Apart from the typical scooters, new age scooters are also used. They look similar to our Kinetic Blaze. The shield on the handle is so huge that it covers the face of the rider too. Most of the 2 wheelers were black in color. While walking on Rue de Rivoli [a street], I saw on the map that the Notre Dame church was on the way to the museum. We took a left turn and started marching towards Notre Dame. The big and beautiful river Seine has to be crossed to reach the church. The river is not very big in terms of width but the several bridges to cross at different places are very nice. We saw a few men swimming in the river with a guy driving the motor boat. The colour of the water was totally brown. We walked further down the road and saw magnificent buildings in the area. We then reached the church. There was a very long queue to get into the church and my colleague was not interested to go in. The church is really huge, 43 meters high from the ground!
I badly wanted to go into the church and managed to convince him to go with me.

The church is marvelous. The number of people inside was a big turn off. But the surprising thing was that even with the large number of people inside, there was absolute silence! I was imagining the queue in in our temples during festivals. How much of sound we people create while going in the queue. We are in contrast to these people in a lot of aspects. The art on the colored glass inside the church was mesmerizing [I'm learning new adjectives!]. I was wondering who had the patience to do such wonderful things. The work on the walls and the roof, the colored glass art, the wooden doors of the church, the work on the outer walls... whew! Brilliant people have lived before us. We spent about 20 minutes inside the church and hurriedly marched back towards the main road to reach the Museum.

On the way to the museum, we saw a huge building named Hotel De Ville. Both of us saw this majestic building and wondered who could afford to stay in a hotel like this. We then learned that it was not a hotel but the city hall of Paris where the Mayor sits! Thank god, we did not ask somebody how much the hotel would charge for a day! Wierd names people give to the buildings. We started walking further down the road and finally reached the Louvre Museum. We could not figure out the entrance to this museum. After strolling for a minute or two around it's compound, we found an entrance and went in. We had entered the Cour Carre of the museum. This area is a huge quadrangle between the walls of the museum. We were not able to find the entrance into the museum here either. I had read the 'Da Vinci Code' and was all excited to see the pyramid and the paintings inside. As soon as I came near one door of the quadrangle, I saw a real big glass pyramid infront of me. There were 2 big fountains beside the pyramid splashing water and 2 small pyramids, beside the larger one. There are 3 pavilions in the museum named Denon, Sully and Richelieu. Each of the pavilions have 4 floors and trust me, it will take at least 3 hours to see one floor of one pavilion fully. The Louvre Museum is that huge! It holds some of the most famous works of art in the world. The mostest famous [what a word, mostest!] being Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. We entered the museum through the big pyramid and bought 2 tickets in the vending machine. We started with the Denon pavilion and started seeing the artifacts in a selective manner. The sculptures done look absolutely real. The sculptors have taken care off the very minute details like the curl of the hair and the buttons on the garment. The facial expressions are so natural that you get a doubt if it is a sculpture or a real face, no exaggeration. We quickly walked through all the sections waiting to see Mona Lisa. All the paintings can be viewed from such a close distance that you can touch them. But Mona Lisa is protected by 2 gaurds around her. There is a railing that has been put at least 15 feet in front of the painting. Nobody can get close to the painting. I had expected it to be a huge painting. But it is just about 77X53 cms in size. We then saw the other masterpieces of the museum and spent about 4 and half hours in total. I am not writing much about the museum because I am not knowledgeable enough to appreciate the art of the greatest artistes ever.

Out we came from the museum to have our pre-packed lunch, the croissants and a bottle of coke. We sat under the shade of a tree and started feeding the pigeons that were around us while feeding ourselves. We then came out of the museum and a saw a pillar that had a gold covering at the top. Its name is Concorde. The square is called Place de la Concorde. These countries call junctions as squares in contrast to our circles. Standing in front of this pillar, we saw the Champs Élysées [the main shopping street of Paris], a huge building to our right which had about 4 French flalgs fluttering in front of it and a really big building a little far from us that had a wonderful glass roof. We started walking towards the building with the flags in front of it. It was the Assemblée Nationale, the lower house of the French Parliament. While walking towards this building, we saw another building which had a golden dome at its top. We were not sure if it was the assembly of some other building.

After doing a pradakshiNa around the National Assembly, we proceeded towards the Hotel des Invalides, the golden dome building. This was built by the king Napolean Bonaparte for his men who were injured in the wars to be treated or for people who retired from the army who could stay. The Les Invalides has a museum now and a church inside it. Unfortunately, by the time we reached, it was closed. We then walked in the opposite direction to reach the glass roofed building. It is called the Grand Palais. This was built in 1900 AD for an exhibition. It still functions as an exhibition hall which was again closed by the time we reached. While we were clicking a few snaps of this palace, an elderly man said that the building is really beautiful. I started a conversation with him and came to know that he had been staying in Paris for the past 6 years. He enquired about our visit to Paris and was kind enough to suggest a few more must-visit places in Paris that were not in our list. The moment he got to know we were from India, he asked us if we were software engineers! I was suprised when he said he had heard my company's name too! A gentleman he was.

We were done with seeing the on-the-fly-decided spots, and we had to go to the Eiffel tower from the Grand Palace. Our legs were not ready to take us as we had been walking all day long and had not sat for even an hour. But the excitement of going on top of the tower was far more than the fatigue. We sat on a bench for about 10 minutes and then took out our map and reached the Eiffel tower in about 20 minute's time. The tower seemed to be not so long from a kilometer away but as we were nearing it, our necks had a tough time. When we reached the base of the tower, we could see the tower touching the skies. What a sight it was. There was no way of seeing all the 4 legs of the tower in the frame of my camera. It was about 7 PM and the sun was beginning to retire for the day.

We sat on a bench infront of the tower and both of us were dumbstruck looking at this mega structure. How could anyone think of building such a monstrous tower? Gustav Eiffel is the man who designed this tower. This 325 meter tower was built in just 3 years from 1887 to 1889. It was built as the entrance arch for the 'Exposition Universelle', a world fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution. Have I improved my History? Thanks, Wikipedia and Microsoft [ctrl-c and ctrl-v!! ha ha]

The serpentine queue to buy the tickets to go up the tower was very long. The croissant had got digested even before it could reach my stomach and both of us were so hungry that we could eat just anything given to us. Luckily, there was a small eatery at the base of the tower and even that had a queue. Both of us lined up and I saw that the only that I could eat was a sandwich that had egg and vegetables in it. After about 45 minutes, my turn came and the shopkeeper said "Only Hamburger and fries available". I was not sure if the fries was made only from potatoes. So, I safely purchased a bottle of mineral water to stop the bandicoots running around in my stomach [for those of you who could make any sense, hotte nalli ili alla hegNa vodaadtaa ide, asht hashvu anta heLteevalla, adanne inglees nal barde]. My colleague doesn't eat Ham and we ended up drinking the half a liter water. We then lined up for the queue to buy the tickets. About half an hour after we were standing in the queue, the illumination of the tower was done as Mr. Sun had gone down to sleep. The yellow sodium vapor lamps made the tower glow with a golden color. The brownish-gray tower turned into a beautiful golden one. Added to this glow, a series of flash lights started sparkling the whole tower. Every hour, for about 2 or 3 minutes, these white lights start flashing all over the tower. If the tower is viewed from far, it will look as though the whole tower is sparkling. The wait lasted for about 2 and half hours until we reached the counter to buy the tickets for the third floor. The tower has 3 floors, the first floor has a restaurant and a couple of shops for people to buy the souvenirs. The second floor is the main viewing area which also has shops. The third floor is the top most, that is the peak of the tower. People can buy the tickets to any floor of their choice. The lift takes the people till the second floor from the ground. Everybody has to get out of the lift as there is another one that takes people from 2nd to the 3rd. The minimum waiting time to switch the lifts is about 45 minutes. People have to stand in yet another queue for switching. We did not get down at the 1st floor and directly went to the second floor.

The spectacular night view of this beautiful city from the second floor was ... [sorry, I don't have words to tell, you have to experience it once in your life] I could see small yellow dots everywhere as far as my eyes could see. The bridges over Seine were illuminated and the cruise boats in the river looked really nice. One can go to each corner of the tower and see the whole city. It was very windy and I put on my gloves and monkey cap to avoid problems in the third floor. The distance from the 2nd to the 3rd is almost same as that between ground and the 2nd. We waited for about half an hour more and got into the lift to go to the top most point in Paris. As soon as we came out of the lift into the viewing area, I felt as though I would be taken away by the wind. It was very very windy and very cold at the top. Nobody can stay for more than 5 minutes with so much of wind. I thought the view from the second floor was the best, but this floor was more fun. I could not hold my camera properly because of the wind. I quickly shot a video of the night view from all the corners of the tower.

We spent about 5 minutes in the third floor and came back to the ground. The whole operation of buying the ticket, viewing Paris and coming back to the base of the tower took around 4 hours! My legs were paining so much that I just could not stand for a minute any more. As soon as we came out of the lift, we started limping towards the bench. There was no chance for us to walk anymore. It had been about 14 hours of the day on our legs. But we still had not seen the tower from far when it was illuminated, we had not seen the Champs Élysées and we were HUNGRY! With great difficulty [I swear it was very difficult for me with my new leather shoes biting my toes all the time], we crossed the road and entered the premises of the Palais de Chaillot, a palace just opposite to the tower. We were in no mood to check if we could go inside the palace, we just wanted to view the tower from this palace and get moving as we were fully exhausted. The tower from the palace was just awesome. The golder tower was beaming the search lights all across the city. A lot of people were in the palace's premises to take the photos of the tower. This is the only place I think where you can take the tower in one piece in a single photograph. Then we came back near the tower and hired a taxi to go to Champs Élysées. The sexagenarian lady taxi driver, took us to our destination in 5 minutes in her Peugeot. We got down and the time was around 12 AM in the night!

But seeing the people around us on the streets, it felt as though the time was around 7:30 PM. Many shops were open, a lot of people on the streets, restaurants were all open. The night life of Paris is amazing! We saw an Italian restaurant and went in hoping to find some thing in vegetarian. I was lucky enough, they had a vegetarian pizza! Authentic Italian Pizza! My colleague wanted something in chicken and they did not have anything of his choice. Not taking the risk of eating any other kind of meat, he ordered a Spaghetti that had only tomato sauce in it since he doesn't like pizzas. The hot, smoking pizza arrived in a few minutes and it was in my stomach in matter of few minutes! The base of the pizza was like a chapathi, very thin. There was a lot of cheese, tomatoes, onion, capsicum, Jalapenos and a few olives in the pizza. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

After our dinner, we came out in the street and started walking casually. This streets houses the famous theaters, Moulin Rogue and Lido. When we were gazing at the stores of some of the famous fashion designers, we heard loud slogans being screamed on the road. Suddenly, a lot of people were running in the street with some flag. They were shouting at the top of their voices in French. We got frightened. I asked my colleague to put his head down and simply keep walking. A gang of guys on a vehicle shouted something in French looking at us. I don't know if it was something at us or their protests. The police also arrived at the spot with their sirens blaring. Both of us were scared of what would happen and decided to get back to the hotel immediately. We searched for a taxi, got one and reached our hotel at 1:30 AM.

What a beautiful day it had been! The Notre Dame Church, the Louvre Museum, the Eiffel Tower, the roads of the city, the dinner, the 20 odd kilometer walk , the leg pain... whew! A tiring, but a superb experience in the superb city.

I don't know how many of you will be reading this line. Thanks for reading this longest post! Hope you got a glimpse of one of the world's most famous and beautiful cities.