SPRING BREAK!!!! - Part 1: Paris, France

Saturday 3 – Wednesday 7

On Friday March 2, Nicole and I took a train to Rome, spent a night in a camping hostel (there were areas for tents, areas for trailer homes, rooms made in mobile homes (we stayed in one of those) and bungalows). At 3:30am we went to Rome Ciampino Airport and took a flight to Paris…or so we thought.

The airport, for some reason considered a Paris airport, is about 1.5 hours away from Paris, so we had to take a bus. After much hullabaloo to find a metro station near where the bus dropped us, we got on, took a metro to our quite-in-the-center-of-city hostel, which we soon discovered was quite-horribly-dilapidated.

Now, bear with me becuase the next few paragraphs will be about this hostel - it was a rather entertaining experience in that weird-once-in-a-life-time sort of way (and I get enjoyment out of describing it!). Luna Park (or is it Luna Parc? WHO KNOWS!? We saw Parc on the sign board outside, and Park on all their online stuff and Park on the payment receipt!). Anyway, we check in by 12ish and are exhausted and super hungry. We go up the rickety “spiral” stairs to the 3^rd floor, passing doors labeled “WC” shoved into the corners in the stairwell (there was barely room to stand in the WC). After having struggled with the keys and the door, we manage to get into our room that was to be our humble abode for the next 4 nights. Man, was it humble.

Humble is almost an understatement. The carpet was brown and therefore inevitably looked crusty; the bedspread had multiple burn holes that made it look almost as crispy and holey as papad (for you non-Indians, papad is that circular flat crispy peppery stuff served at Indian restaurants, it’s usually given when you’ve been seated). The pillow, if one can even call it that, was, what I think, lump(s) of rags (or old pillows?) rolled into the top end of the bedsheet thus forced to be in that position only (unless you had the guts to undo the pillow-packaging to be able to move it as you pleased). It also had a faint smell of cigarette smoke – delicious. (Note: it’s a double bed, so Nicole and I are sharing this rag-roll-pillow because there was only one and it didn’t even go from one end to the other of the bed). On a positive note, the sheets smelled washed, like bleach, BUT (there’s always a but) they were so worn out that we could see the blue and white mattress through the thinness. Having said all this, it should come as no surprise to you that we covered our respective pillow area with a t-shirt before putting our heads down on it and that we slept with socks on to really minimize our contact with the bed and its wonders.

Onwards to the rest of the room; we had a small table and a chair in the far corner near the window with a deep red, also burned, curtain. We also had decrepit free-standing wood closet that was near the foot of the bed to the right. Now, what we didn’t notice at first entering the room is that on the other side of the closet, there was a wall segment that didn’t go up to the ceiling and stuck out about 2 feet. Behind this wall was a sink, mirror and… a bidet. A bidet!!!!!! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Did they think that we would go to the bathroom, and then come running back to the room with our pants at our ankles to use it?!?!

Moving past the horrors of our room, we quickly freshened up and went to a nearby bar/café for lunch. We both ordered potato omelets, juice, and bread. We were so incredibly happy that our meal didn’t involve olive oil, salt-less bread, mozzarella, or pasta. After having eaten, we went back to the hostel, got some things sorted out, and headed out to explore the streets of Paris.

We walked around our neighborhood while making our way over to Notre Dame. Along our walk, we got hungry again andbought crepes (mine was
caramel filled and Nicole’s with chestnut cream/paste) – they were awesome.
Being Saturday afternoon, Notre Dame was swarming with tourists but the lines moved fast and smoothly. It was incredible. The rose windows inside, and all the other stained glass was quite amazing.

There was this HUGE chandelier about 15 feet in diameter and 10 feet tall (so it seemed to me) that was on display on the floor back behind the alter. It used to be lit up for special occasions and such but I don’t think they use it anymore.

We also saw this tomb that had a sculpture on top depicting the deceased sitting up and coming out of the coffin. Nicole and I thought we could climb up to the towers but the lines were long and slow moving, so we decided we might come back some other time. We wandered about some more, had dinner and called it a night around 9pm, exhausted from being up since 3:30am.

On Sunday we went to the Louvre (which is free on first Sundays of each month fyi). It was crowded, but because the museum is so large that it wasn’t so bad. We spent about 3 hours in the Louvre and saw MANY MANY art pieces. I saw the Mona Lisa, which turned out to be not that exciting for me when I felt I was being herded like cows into a fenced area – they have a special roped off area for it, and everyone has to move, somehow, forward to see it, you barely have time to look and there’s a lot of shoving involved. The pushing and shoving kind of took the excitement out of seeing the famous painting. But we did see about 4 or 5 other original Da Vinci paintings, all were rather sinister and dark (mood and colours). We walked through the Egyptian, Islamic and Greek art and saw my favorite Greek sculpture from antiquity: The Winged Victory of Samothrace. (There is too much about the sculpture that I like for me to talk about it here, so Google or Wikipedia it, and please do, it’s an amazing sculpture). We also saw the Venus de Milo, and roamed the 15-18^th century French, German, and Dutch paintings.

After the Louvre, we met with Anu masi’s (my mom’s childhood friend) family friends, Terry and Yves, who live a little outside of Paris. They took us out for a snack at Angelina’s (a very very delicious café – I got white chocolate hot chocolate and a mound of spongy chocolately goodness engulfing a crispy almost coffee like chocolate center all covered in a thin layer of chocolate icing, called the “Opera”…more commonly known as cake) then we went to a concert! They took us to Temple du Foyer de l’Ame, where every month, there is a concert performed for 45 minutes to an hour played on old instruments (harpsichord, flutes, violins, etc). They played “Ich leb, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergotzen” by Johann Sebastian Bach and there was singing too by 3 men and a woman. They also combined into the JS Bach piece the “Trio Sonate en re mineur” by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, JS Bach’s son. (The first name I gave is in German, and I think the second name is in French, no translations sorry!!).

It was a great. The acoustics were great, so the whole performance was wonderful. Nicole and I were extremely glad we were able to go, especially since it’s not a touristy thing to do! (We were probably the two youngest in the audience, everyone else seemed to be above the age of 35, and by that I mean they were mostly above the age of 50).

After the concert the four of us walked around, we were actually very near the neighborhood of our hostel. Then we headed towards the Museum of Modern Art to see the monstrosity of the building (really quite ugly and out of place as you can see in the picture!). Then we went into a small church because it looked cool from the outside. After that we had dinner at a French restaurant and it was possibly one of the best meals I’ve had since I’ve been abroad. I got potted duck spring rolls with honey sauce for an appetizer and grilled sirloin steak with bleu cheese sauce for my entrée. We said our farewells after dinner then Nicole and I went back to Luna Park to pass out.

Monday morning we took the metro to the Arch of Triumph then walked over (longer than expected) to the Eiffel Tower. Not only did we see it, but we went up it…and no, we did not take the elevator. WE CLIMBED OVER 600 STEPS. (talk about out-doing a stair-master machine thing at the gym). It was a windy windy day, but the view of Paris was incredible. It was cool to see old buildings mixed with newer architecture, the more “international architecture” (high risers, etc). But the new buildings weren’t overbearing so I felt it was a good balance between old and new. After the tower we got popcorn and fries then parted ways. I went to the Picasso Museum and Nicole to the Rodin Museum. Turned out the Rodin Museum is closed on Mondays so we ended up going together on Tuesday!

View from the Eiffel Tower:

Tuesday was a rainy, cold day, so we spent most of our time indoors at the Rodin Museum, in cafes, and we went to a mall to check out the French shopping scene. After about 3 hours in a shopping center, we were tired so we went to the hostel to relax a little before heading out for dinner and a jazz club. Dinner was delicious, we found this small restaurant/bar and got grilled chicken pieces marinated in thyme with honey sauce, with lamb’s lettuce salad, and mashed potatoes. We attempted looking for a jazz bar that didn’t cost an arm and a leg but it was pointless, so we went into a “rock” bar that had a French cover band singing English songs (mostly Metallica type of music).

I’d like to mention that whenever we could, we would get crepes. It didn’t matter what time it was or even if we were that hungry, if we saw crepes that looked good we got it – we were addicted, my favorite was Nutella and Coconut flakes (I had a ham and cheese one, it wasn’t that great, was over loaded with ham and way to cheesy).

On Wednesday, a sad day for our spring break, we had our last crepes while on the train heading towards the airport to get to Berlin. We ended our Paris trip on a sweet note and were excited to eat a hearty German meal and also to see what our next hostel would be like since it only cost us 10 euros more than Luna Park/Parc.