Tag Archives: paris

July 6, 2012 · 8:31 am

The French Resistance

I wrote a rather withering post about my trip to Paris recently. One might almost think I have a dislike for the French, or at least a mild degree of contempt. Not true. I like French people, and generally speaking, I would (and have) chose to travel with a Frenchie over a Brit any day. Sure, I enjoy playing up to stereotypes sometimes. I don’t see why any conversation with a Frenchie shouldn’t begin with Waterloo or Trafalgar. :)  We’ve waged a thousand years worth of war against each other, which generally resulted in the English/British Fleet sinking the French fleet.

Although the truth is, for all the rivalry and insults, when we join together we can produce the most incredible results – Concorde and the Channel Tunnel spring straight to mind.  Unless we join together to wage war against a third party, in which case the British fleet still sinks the French fleet as a warm up, before rescuing our European cousins later on in the proceedings. But I digress and should return to my point.

There’s lots about the French to admire. Plenty of which we Brits would do well to learn from. Their culture, passion, lifestyle and sophistication. The ladies go for the elegant look, rather than the British slutty look. Which I find preferable. The French do chic and trendy rather than brash and flash.  And whilst you can find modern stuff just as you would in any major city, their culture is far less disposable, and much more inclined to favour something traditional or hand crafted.

The French aren’t quite into ‘mend and make do’ as Mexicans are, but there are plenty of little shops where you can get clothes mended. In the UK, perfectly good clothing would just get dumped and replaced. There are still some great food markets around as well, although I would give the Marche des Enfants Rouge a miss. It might be the oldest one, but it was frankly rubbish. There are plenty of antique and hand crafted furniture shops too, which we again seem to have lost in England. Here we make do with Ikea, although I did recently stumble across a pretty nice range of French furniture at the Furniture Market that I found online.

The French do quirky too, and I like quirky. I often berate French cars for their blandness and lack of reliability. That is criticism that is largely justified. But it wasn’t always so. At least, as far as blandness it wasn’t. Citroen was once a magnificent marque – we had a giant Familiale to carry the family about when I was a kid. They were innovative and sleek. Ahead of their time. Terribly unreliable too, but still….they had that little bit of je ne sais pas quoi. I was delighted to find a multi floor Citroen ‘museum’ near the Arc de Triomphe, which housed some concourse quality classics, including the Presidential limousine. It was one of my Paris highlights. Click here for the photos on Flickr.

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June 27, 2012 · 8:10 am

The Paris (Dis)Appointment

It’s been a couple of weeks since my long weekend in Paris, and I still haven’t gotten around to recording my thoughts. I went there with high expectations, given the city’s reputation and hype. How to describe my feeling on this famous old metropolis? I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so disappointed with a city. I guess that is one of the consequences of going with such high expectations. But where to start…?

Let’s go with the architecture to kick us off. It’s all quite grand. The fact that the French surrender whenever an enemy gets with gunshot of Paris has ensured the city has survived remarkably intact. The trouble is, as grand as the buildings are, they are all a bit too similar. Which means the streets start becoming bland and uniform. It lacks the architectural diversity of other cities I’ve been to. I blame the Germans. A few bombs in the 1940′s might have mixed the city up a bit. Also, the oldest buildings, such as Notre Dame, seem over-preserved. Almost like new. It reminded me of the restored paw on the Sphinx in Cairo.

Let’s move on to food. Again, I had high expectations. I knew it’d be pricey, but I hoped to have at least a couple of good French meals. The UK has a terrible reputation for food, so surely Paris could impress my quality starved palate there. I ordered a Boeuf Bourginon. Played it safe. One quality meal would do me. And at least it wouldn’t come served with chips, like it might in London. It was served by a delightful waiter. With chips. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Art and monuments? Paris has the best in the world, as far as art galleries go. I visited just one of them though. I only had four days in the city, and that seemed to be the length of the queue to go to the Louvre. We did go to the Pompidou Centre, and that was a fine, if quirky, building. With a fine collection. The building was designed by a Brit, by the by. They actually had to amend a Parisian planning law to allow a non Frenchman to design a building there. The Eiffel Tower? Didn’t bother going up there either. They only had a single elevator working.  Can you picture the queues? Paris is broke in more ways than one.

There also seemed to be no buzz to the city. No background hum. No energy. I didn’t see a single Ferrari, Porsche or Lamborghini. It all has a strange blandness. Even the metro lacked any real charm – it was functional but terribly bland. Which is a shame. I normally love metro systems. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy my trip. But it really wasn’t the city I expected it to be. Everything is grossly overpriced. Grossly. Which may explain why the vast majority of cafes, brasseries and restaurants were empty.

Are you tossing up between a trip to Paris or London? I may be accused of bias, but I promise I’m being objective. I’ve been thinking about this for a good couple of weeks. London has energy, diversity and surprises galore. You can eat well, affordably. In fact you can eat at a Michelin star restaurant for less than some fairly run of the mill Parisian restaurants. The Tube is an adventure. The best London museums are just as good, more diverse and -get this – free to enter. Different neighbourhoods in London can appear to be from different worlds.

It’s not just London I’d recommend over Paris though. New York, Chicago, Mexico City, Budapest, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpar are all cities that I’d prefer to visit a second time rather than the French capital. Sorry Paris, but out of ten, I award you four stars. Not that Paris will care. My stars count for little. Still. At least I can say I’ve been. But I wouldn’t recommend anyone else to bother. If you do, I suggest going out of season in January or February. Did I take any photos? Sure. But I have to say my camera stayed in my bag most of the time. I was just that apathetic. I reckon I took fewer snaps in four days than I have sometimes done in a single day in Mexico City or London. But anyway, there’s all here on Flickr.

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June 22, 2012 · 8:16 am

La Residence de la Tour

Like most people, I like to research places I’m going to visit, hotels I’m going to stay in and products I’m going to buy. There’s usually at least a few reviews for even the most obscure stuff. How much you’d trust those reviews are another thing altogether. I’ve come across plenty of really positive reviews that, if I had to wager a few pounds on, I’d guess were written by the seller.

Coming across terrible reviews is easy. But I expect to find terrible reviews. Even the best places will get things wrong from time to time, and people are so much quicker to leave a bad review than a good one. I’ve written more than one bad review myself before now. I’d like to think I can take the time to say something positive when things go right though.

So to the point of my review – the Residence de la Tour, the hotel in Paris that we called home for three nights a couple of weeks ago. The reviews I read were largely ok, and most of them actually summed up the place quite well. It is slightly old and worn. But it has character, and I like that. The rooms are smallish, but we weren’t cramped. The bed did ‘boast’ a slightly thinner mattress than I’m used to, but it was comfortable enough and no springs dug me in the back.

The shower unit provided hot water at the first time of asking, and like the rest of the room it was clean.  There’s no iron or tea maker, but then again, there’s a cafe downstairs and rarely bother with pointless tasks such as ironing anyway. It’s not right in the very centre of Paris, but neither is it far away either. The metro is literally a five minute walk away, and a ten minute ride without changes to the Champs Elysée. The neighbourhood itself is lovely if unspectacular. Quiet, but with a great market nearby and some nice bars. Ristorante Italiano served up great food at reasonable (for Paris) prices. There’s a Carrefour supermarket nearby too.

There are two things that really made this hotel a great stay though. Firstly, the price. I paid up front through Laterooms and got the three nights for £130. There were grungy hostels with terrible ratings that would have charged us double that for a pair of dorm beds. We got seriously good value for money. There was free WiFi too. And it was both quick and reliable.

The second thing was the service. I knew straight away that we’d hit gold. We arrived at just before 9am, three hours before check in. We hoped we might be at least allowed to leave our bags somewhere. The cafe/breakfast room was crammed with visitors and the owner (I assume) was rushed off his feet. It didn’t look good. But he smiled, and then actually apologised for not having a room ready. He grabbed our bags and put them in a sideroom, and then promised to have our room ready in half an hour.

It was ready, and we were checked in. He didn’t speak much English, but enough for us to get by. We met his daughter the next day, who does speak English and was really helpful in recommending places to go. On the final day he allowed me to charge my spare phone battery behind the bar after we had checked out. These are all little touches that one could simply describe as ‘customer service’. But they’re little touches that I find are getting rarer by the day. And when you are granted them, you’re all too often met by both a frown and a bill. The final word? If you’re on a budget and looking for somewhere nice, friendly and peaceful, you need look no further.

 

 

 

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June 20, 2012 · 7:52 am

The Paris Catacombs

My trip to Paris took me through some dark twists and turns and a few morbid corners. None more so than the catacombs deep under the streets of the city, where the bones of six million Parisians lie stacked up. It’s a mind-boggling number, is six million. There’s a whole Jewish holocaust’s worth of former city inhabitants there, the remains almost decoratively arranged.

Each and every one of them was a person with a life, with a story to tell. I did wonder, as I looked into the sockets of a few skulls, who they were, what they did and what was the final affliction that sent them down here? There’s so many of them though. You soon stop wondering, and start to understand the logic behind Stalin’s theory of what makes a tragedy and what adds up to a statistic.

The bones are stacked in just a small corner of the catacombs. Apparently they account for only 1/800th of the space available. That means there’s almost enough room left for the entire global population. The catacombs exist for a simple reason. All that stone in the buildings above the streets had to come from somewhere. I have more photos on Flickr, and not just of skulls. There were some very cool rock carvings down there too.

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June 17, 2012 · 8:25 am

Pere Lachaise

I’ll have a few posts about Paris coming up over the next week. But I’ll start with what turned out to be one of my favourite corners of the French capital.  The Pere Lachaise cemetery. It was almost a pilgrimage for me. And for many others. The cemetery hosts a goodly number of folks who have two or three things in common. Most of them were either wealthy of famous. All of them are very dead. Including Jim Morrison, the front man of The Doors.

I remember my introduction to The Doors well. I was a teenager. I’d probably heard Light My Fire on the radio before, but never taken much notice. After all, this was a band who had their fame before I was born. Jim Morrison had taken up permanent residence at Pere Lachaise a full year before I appeared on the scene. I went round a friends house, finding him relaxed in an armchair listening to some music. He was utterly stoned. I joined him. The CD he was listening to was The Doors soundtrack – the Oliver Stone movie was about to be released.

I loved those tracks the first time I heard them. Maybe the smoke helped, but even so, I don’t often develop an instant appreciation for music. His voice is hypnotic. The lyrics clever. The tunes timeless. What remains of the band still kicks ass.  I really enjoyed the film as well. And the ending, at Pere Lachaise. I’ve always wanted to go. I finally did.

I smoked a legal cigarette as I took in the surroundings and atmosphere. The scene has been altered a little bit since the film. There’s no bust and the area is closed off by metal barriers a few feet from his resting place. But it is still pretty much the same. I imagine it hasn’t changed an awful lot since 1971, bar a few more entries into the cemetery’s Hall of Fame. Unlike, sadly, the rest of Paris. This is an unspoilt corner of the city that has stayed true to the spirit of the metropolis. The graffiti and chewing gum tree would be vandalism elsewhere, but fit in just right here.

I have a few photos of the cemetery on Flickr, and a few more on Instagram. Rest in peace Jim.

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