About Gustis, Metros and Euros - VI

This part of the travelogue has been long due, finally I have found some time and energy to write it down. Though the details might have faded out, the memories of the trip are still very fresh and perhaps indelible. This is the final part of the travelogue covering the dusk of our sojourn through Italy and France.

Day 8: Paris, France:
We reached our hotel, Hotel Cheverney, at around 1am to be greeted by a very small, stuffy, flimsy-walled and musty room. The air conditioning was broken and the bathroom was pea-sized with no shower curtains or a shower cube (Parisians don't believe in using shower curtain, wonder how they bathe?). We wanted to complain about the air conditioning, but we were pretty exhausted and decided to crash, keeping the window of the room slightly ajar, open enough to let in air and closed enough to ward off a burglar coming in through the grill-less window. We had a good night's sleep and were ahead of schedule too. Though the hotel seemed pretty rundown, it was expensive and the breakfast in the morning was quite good (nothing compares with the Italian places though).

We complained about the broken air conditioning to the front desk guy, who was affable and promised to send in the maintenance folks as soon as possible. After breakfast, we set off on foot through the streets of Paris, guided by a out of scale map (more of a diagram). The map indicated that the Arc de Triumph was very close to the hotel and we started walking towards it. We walked and walked and though we could see the arc it took us at least 45 minutes to get there. The Napoleon built arc itself is huge and very impressive and can be seen from most of the terraces in urban Paris. Though the map we were carrying and the pictures of the city I had seen portrayed Paris as having narrow roads and pavements, Paris is nothing like that. The streets are very wide, the pavements are as wide as the streets themselves. Perhaps you can see the Arc de Triumph from the Louvre or the Eiffel tower from the Arc, but let that not deceive you to believe that these places are walkable, they simply are not and we learnt it the hard way. Weather-wise, Paris was much cloudy and colder than any place in Italy, reminding us of gloomy yet beautiful Pacific Northwest.

From the Arc, we walked down Champ De Elysses that leads to the Louvre, the walk was anywhere between 5-10 km, on a broad pavement, through the shopping district of Paris. Branded stores dot the pavements. After walking for a really long time, we reached the Louvre, quite exhausted. The glass pyramid and the crowds welcome you to the Louvre, the biggest museum I have ever seen. We got our tickets priced at 9 Euros (cheaper than the Vatican and a whole bunch of things to see too). Every month the Louvre features a theme-based gallery, this time it was based on Egyptian artifacts. Exploring all the galleries in the Louvre is like visiting a country, it is huge, exhausting and impossible to cover. Putting on our "tourist" hat, we decided to cover only things that our friends and relatives would ask when we get back home. No prizes for guessing what these were, of course, the Mona Lisa, the inverted pyramid and all those umpteen meaning-ascribed paintings you can gather from the Da Vinci code. If you are looking for the Last Supper painting, you are looking at the wrong gallery. The Last supper is at Milan in Italy and not at the Louvre. I guess this is a very commonly asked query at the Louvre and there are paper placards that tell the tourists about this fact.

The Mona Lisa is the most sought after thing here, a small painting in comparison to the big canvasses in the neighboring galleries, that has managed to capture the imagination and awe of millions. This particular painting has been give its due by being hung upon a separate wall. Scores of visitors crowd around it, trying to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa from their eyes and more importantly from their cameras. We bought some memorabilia from the museum and headed out after seeing the inverted glass pyramids, a point on the "Rose Line". Later we took a 1.5 hours bus tour around the streets of Paris and treated ourselves to some ice-cream that we bought at a local grocery store (yeah, grocery stores are inexpensive). The bus tour covered most of the popular monuments, buildings and sites giving us a quick summary of what would be interesting to see. One such place we identified was the government building opposite to the Eiffel tower, providing a stupendous view of the tower.



After the bus tour, we decided to take a metro back to the hotel and get some rest before heading out again. When we were in our room, an attendant to fix the air conditioning just barged in without a courteous knock on the door. We were shocked, I thought such things happened only on the silver screen or comic books, but this was drama in real life. The man then apologized and went away. The sad part is our air-conditioning didn't get repaired after that.

The trip was perfectly timed, it was French open time and I wanted to pay a visit to the Roland Garros. After a brief cooling of heels, we set off to Roland Garros, a suburb to the south-west of Paris. A guide at the metro station took a print out of the most optimal route to get there and off we went jumping from metro to metro till we reached our destination. An American woman tennis enthusiast with her son told us about a free shuttle to the stadium, but the shuttle didn't arrive after 10-15 minutes of wait at the stop. We then walked about 500 m to the stadium. A big match had completed, Federer had moved on, but Sharapova had crashed to a 4th round exit. It was not very crowded now as the big games were over. An interesting thing we observed was that there were a lot of "black" ticket sellers and ticket resellers at Roland Garros. Their illegal acts was happening right under the nose of security. Of course there is no "dus ka thees" being uttered anywhere, rather whispering rendezvous about the price or soliciting for tickets. We bought our tickets and walked around the stadium that houses more than 20 tennis clay courts. We watched a doubles game featuring Jonas Bjorkman and a few junior French open games that was happening in the courts on either side of the center courts. As memorabilia we bought a set of Dunlop tennis balls, that are used for the French Open. At Roland Garros we encountered a brief shower, nothing to get us drenched though. As we walked back from the stadium looking for a place to eat I noticed Ramesh Krishnan walking past with another person.

We had our usual meal of pizza margharita at a local joint and headed towards the Eiffel tower to catch a glimpse of it at dusk. The metro out of Roland Garros was pretty crowded given that all important matches were over by 7-8pm. The stadium itself closes at 10pm. We walked under the Eiffel tower, amazed by the huge steel structure, that was commissioned to be destroyed, but was saved because it could be used as a broadcasting station. We took a few photographs from the government building across the Seine, opposite to the tower and headed back to our hotels. After getting back, I observed that this is the same place where the song "Ticket to Hollywood" from the movie "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom" was shot.After 10pm they put on the lights and the Eiffel shines like a diamond studded ornament, a sight worth every Euro.

Day 9: Paris, France:

Day 9 was the final day of our trip. We had seen the Eiffel from the exterior, now we had to see it from the top. There are long lines for the 4 elevators that take you to the top. The Eiffel has 3 observatories at different levels and we decided to go to the topmost level of the tower. After a significantly long wait we went to one of the levels. To go to the top you need to switch elevators. It was cloudy and the wind chill was biting. We hadn't taken any protection, like a jacket, something you need to carry with you if you are visiting the top of the Eiffel. The view is brilliant, overlooking the neatly kept gardens on one side, the Seine on the other and the city on the 3rd. After the Eiffel our next stop was to look for a Tintin theme shop, Paris is know to have many. Our research had told us that there was a theme shop near the Cathedral of Notre Dame, perhaps one of the most famous of all the churches in the world.

In Paris if you need directions or help, the best people are the tourists. Most of the tourists are English speaking and while we were a little bit lost in locating the Cathedral, 2 young American girls helped us out. In fact, one of them was from Seattle and had done her internship at the company I work for. Small world eh? We located the Tintin theme shop but couldn't shop anything because of the exorbitant prices and the unimpressive stock. The shop we went into had an entire floor on manga comics, but only a small section on Tintin. We then walked past the church of Notre Dame and along the Seine. There are a bunch of green boxes along the Seine, next to the Louvre, where people sell old journals, books, newspapers etc. Apparently you can find literature dating to the early 20th century at these riverside shops. But they close pretty early and your best bet is to catch them in the morning.

Later we took a cruise on the Seine, the guide telling us about the history of the city, including some facts on how a German general's kind heart prevented the city from being completely destroyed. After the cruise we headed back to our hotels, with very pleasant memories of this beautiful and modern yet archaic and romantic city. We were to head back the next day and for one last time we enjoyed the lights on the Eiffel, a very memorable sight.

Day 10: Paris, France

We got up early, bags packed, ready to go. We had already booked an airport shuttle at 17 Euros a piece and headed back with very pleasant memories of France and Italy, perhaps a very small part of Europe, but definitely a good peek into the continent's diversity, beauty and history. We had learnt a lot about Gustis, Metros and Euros and still the calling of this wonderful continent rings in our ears.

share this: facebook