Days 7 & 8: Paris

We got into Paris via train on Sunday night. Unfortunately, we got in after the tourist info office closed, so armed with the metro maps available in the train station and the address of our hotel, we were mostly on our own to find our way there. The hotel had been advertised as being close to l’Arc de Triomphe and le Champs Elysees. Having some knowledge of Paris geography and the address of the hotel, of course, I was confident that we’d be able to find it with that information.

First stop was at the metro ticket window, where we bought a pack of 20 metro tickets for about 23 Euros. We then found the line running to the Arc de Triomphe and hopped on board. So far, so good. Exiting the metro at our stop, we examined a local neighborhood map to find our hotel’s street. No dice. Next stop: another ticket booth, where we asked for directions to our street. The guy in the booth hadn’t ever heard of it, so he looked it up in his handy street-of-Paris directory. Bad news, he said: we’d metro-ed to the wrong end of town, and we’d have to take two different lines to get to the right area. Still a little in denial, we bought our own map of the city and looked it up ourselves. It looked like he was right and that we’d have to get back on the Metro and travel to the other end of the city.

Nothin’ to it, but to do it at this point. So, we hopped back on the metro line that we’d just gotten off, in the opposite direction. At the station that basically represents the center of the Paris Metro system, we switched to another line taking us to the opposite end of town. Once we arrived, we surfaced to find ourselves looking at an Accenture office and a neighborhood covered in graffiti. We definitely weren’t in the 5-star hotel district. We’d been able to find our hotel’s street on the map, so we set of to find it. After about 10 minutes of wandering around, seemingly without getting any closer to the street, we stopped into a run-down Holiday Inn to ask directions. The nice woman at the counter also had never heard of the street in question, but looked it up in her Paris atlas and gave us further directions. So, off we traipsed, with all of our luggage in tow, to find the hotel.

About five minutes later, we finally found our street and started looking for the building number. This took us about two blocks closer to the Seine until we arrived at the correct the address – which was a large whitewashed cement block building with no business markings and no obvious hotel. Uh-oh. We wandered as far around the building as we could without climbing any spike-covered gates and still could not find the entrance. We double-checked the address and we seemed to be at the right place. We were tired and hot and it was getting dark, so we decided to head back to the friendly arms of the aforementioned Holiday Inn.

When we walked back into the lobby of the Holiday Inn, the desk clerk gave us a sympathetic smile as we told her we’d been unable to find our hotel. We asked if we could use their Wi-Fi to try to locate our hotel, which of course was asking a lot (can we please use your resources to help us give money to your competitor? ) However, she eventually took pity on us and gave us a wireless key good for ½ hour of access. With this, we were able to find our hotel’s local number (all we’d had previously was a number in New York – yes, New York City, USA). Upon calling the hotel, we were able to get accurate metro directions (which, as it turns out took us back past the Arc de Triomphe again.), and about 40 minutes later we found ourselves in the lobby of the hotel in which we had actually reservations!

When we checked in, they told us that we could handle the payment arrangements the next morning. Great! We were very tired, so we got our key, headed up to bed, figured out the Wi-Fi (which cost us 10 Euro – the first time we’d had to pay for Wi-Fi yet.

When we awoke the next morning (now yesterday, we headed down to breakfast). Along the way, we were stopped by the front desk clerk to tell us that she needed a printed copy of our hotel voucher. Huh? What voucher? We told her that we’d made the reservations online and that we had no way of printing any confirmation, etc. that we’d received. She seemed put-off by this, and sent us downstairs to eat breakfast, with instructions to see her after we were done.

Breakfast was good - typical French baguette, croissant, cheese, yogurt and fruit. Rolf swears that the lady running the buffet yelled at him to sit at a different table, but I didn’t see any yelling, so I think he may be exaggerating a touch :)
After breakfast, we headed back up the front desk, as requested, at which point, the front desk clerk decided that it’d be ok for us to use her computer to print out the voucher – since it meant that she could get paid :) That process was relatively painless – and then we were off to explore the city!

The first stop on the tour of the city was the Arc de Triomphe, which is being cleaned/restored along each side, so the city of Paris has cleverly covered the worksite with big banners that replicate the stonework underneath. Considering that they’re falsies, they actually look pretty decent. We considered getting in line to climb to the top of the Arc, but with most of the extremely long lines that we’ve encountered since in Paris, decided that it wasn’t worth the wait, since we could see most of the monument without standing in line.

So, off we went again – now up the Champs Elysees, which had been closed to traffic for an ecodisplay put on by France’s farmers. Imagine a bunch of giant planter boxes spread across Paris’ most famous street, surrounded by a scattering of beauty bark, and you’ve got the eco display. Nice, and it kept the crowds a little of the sidewalk where we were walking. Once we got to the end of the Champ Elysees, we continued past the Grand Palais and the Petite Palais to the Seine. Then, up the Seine and across the river to the Musee D’Orsay. Continuing further up la Rive Gauche, we then crossed the River again to the Louvre.

The lines at the Louvre were moving pretty quickly, so we decided to go inside. It took us about 15 minutes to get through security and buy our tickets. Not too bad. First stop, per Rolf’s request: Yup, the ol’ Mona Lisa. As many of you’ve heard, it’s on the smaller side and the room is super crowded, so you basically just pop in for a couple pictures and then move on.

After taking a gander at the M.L.., we descended to the ground floor, where they had an exhibit of ancient Egyptian and Etruscan artifacts and art. We spent about an hour walking through that (Missing Ramses III our first time through because he’s kinda shoved off into a corner ). All in all, it was a great exhibit – and one that really worked up an appetite because afterwards we agreed that we needed to hit a café for lunch.

We found a nice one across the street from the Louvre, in a paved square where a large group of classical musicians were playing every famous classical piece that you can think of. It was a really nice setting for lunch, so we grabbed an outdoor table, ordered some tasty food and beverages (at which point the waiter smiled encouragingly as I worked out how to say ‘1664’ [as in the year and the beer] in French).

Once lunch was done, we strolled through les Jardins des Tuilleries, up the Champs Elysees, stopping multiple times along the way to buy kitchy-cute souvenirs and back the hotel for a nap because all that culture can really wear a person down .
When we awoke about 3 hours later, it was about an hour before sunset, so we grabbed our cash and IDs and headed out to see La Tour Eiffel. We got off the Metro just in time to catch the Towers on-the-hour light show (in which they randomly light various lights on the structure for a “twinkle” effect) through a gap between a couple buildings. The line to ride to the top of the tower, when we got there was atrociously long, so we walked down to an outdoor café along the Seine to grab some cold drinks and hang out until the next light show.

While down at the Seine, we also found a nice boat tour place and filed that away as a to-do before we left, and then headed back to the hotel to catch some ZZZZZZZZs..