Paris, May 31-June 2, 2005
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The primary purpose of the time in Paris was to recover from Jet Lag.
That turned out to be important as we got essentially no sleep on the
plane (but I did get to see "The Phantom of the Opera" on the movie).
We arrived in Paris at 11:30 AM, but by the time
we got our luggage, cleared customs, picked up our limo (a van of
course) it was after noon, and the travel into downtown Paris took another
hour. So, sometime near 2, we arrived at our hotel. |
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While the outside was not very imposing (see above), the inside was very
pleasant, and our room was even a reasonable size (typical American hotel
room, not typical European). The staff at the front desk all had
reasonable English. In fact, we were quite pleasantly surprised by how
pleasant most everybody was. The old image of the stand-off
French who will not attempt to speak English was not our experience.
My French is a bit (how about a lot) rusty, so we didn't get by much on my
use of the language; but they did seem to appreciate an attempt in their
language. However, they quickly flipped to English almost everywhere we went. |
This is probably the best place to do some clarification of terminology. According to our lecturers, the only difference between the Gauls
and the Celts is whether to speaker is Greek or Latin. The Greeks called
these people Celts, the Romans called these people Gauls. Thus the old
Asterisk comic book we all enjoyed was really wrong when it had the Celts
fighting the Gauls.
If one traces people linguistically, it's clear that
the Celts were pretty mobile people. Clearly, when Paul wrote his letter
to the Christians in Galatia, those were Gaelic people, so we know that by the
time of Christ, they ranged from modern Turkey to Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Professor Joseph Nagy (pronounced Naj) from UCLA proposed that elements of the
Celts made it into modern India as well.
So, at this point, we were already starting our tour of the Celtic / Gallic
lands.
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We saw a lot of Paris on Monday standing on (and wearing out) our feet.
Less than 2 blocks from our hotel, we got this very inviting view of Sacre
Cour (the cathedral of the Sacred Heart) which gives you the impression
that lots of things are pretty close by. Well, they're not. We
needed to get to Gare Nord (in the direction of Sacre Cour) to convert a
voucher into a 2 day subway pass, so
we walked there, thinking it was not far. Forty minutes later we got there, converted our
voucher (just before the tourist office closed), but we took the Metro back
(5 stations south, 3 stations west, so you begin to get an idea how far it
was).
We did find a very pleasant Brasserie only 3 blocks from our hotel, so
had dinner there. It's amazing what a little bit of wine does to your
ability to stay awake when you haven't slept in 40 hours, so we had no
problem sleeping. |
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We had a pretty good (20 year old) map of the region, but were
always going the wrong way! I decided they shouldn't put hotels on the
north side of the street unless they printed maps that had south at the
top. Trying to find the Opera house - we finally found it.
We walked fully around it, I believe, before we crossed over our original
street and saw it from the back. It would have been much easier if
I'd turned right coming out of the hotel instead of left. On the other
side of the Opera house, we found the local tour bus company and took
the great circle of Paris tour (starting below). |
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Our tour bus was the double decked style, with the top deck open (which
today was fine, but when we used the same style in Edinburgh, it wasn't).
We rolled right into the Louvre (through a door that didn't look big enough)
to see the contrast of the 1980s Pyramid with the 1500s architecture |
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Victory Arches seem to be very popular. This one (Carousel Arch in
the Louvre courtyard) contrasts with
the ones in Rome, but clearly designed with the same intent. You can
compare this to the Roman Arch we
photographed in 2003. This one is nice looking, but IMHO, not as impressive. |
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No visit to Paris is complete without a stop at Notre Dame (and we were in
it twice, around it a third time). And, while there were lots of
people there, it was no where near as crowded as other years we've been
there. |
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We also rolled right through the Place du Concorde (which has had
several other names, none politically correct when the next regime took
over). I took many pictures of the fountain, I think it's funny that the
best one is the one I snapped from the bus rather than one I spent hours
trying to frame right. |
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Finally we did the grand circle of the Eiffel Tower, then drove past Les
Invalides.
This photo doesn't show it very well, but there are big signs on the
Eiffel tower (and all over Paris) advertising the fact that Paris is a
candidate for the 2012 Olympics and they are trying very hard to win it.
Current "book" says they will, but I haven't been told when the decision
will be announced. |
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Wednesday afternoon we took the Metro as close as we could get to Sacre Coeur. Then we
walked about 4 blocks uphill to get to the base of these stairs. They
took us up to what is obviously a very popular place, another set of stairs.
(All of this of course was just warm up for Mont St. Michel.) |
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Taking pictures inside we found out was not considered appropriate.
Before I was counseled about that however, I did get this picture of a
mural, and a side altar. |
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Thursday morning was "on our own", but after lunch, we boarded a bus to head
towards Rouen, our port of departure. We got there before our boat was
ready for loading, so spent some time at the cathedral downtown.
Getting a picture of the facade is very challenging, everything else is too
close. I finally pasted this together with PhotoStich. |
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The next stages really were almost too easy. The bus took us to
the pier, they collected our Passports (so they could do all the
clearances as we went from country to country ), and boarded us.
We had a glass of punch in the lounge (so they could get our luggage to
our rooms without us in the way) and then went to our room (actually a
suite for 4, but the entry way had two fold up couches which we never
laid out). As you can see, as cruise ships go, this is a small
one, which means we could get into harbors that the larger ones could
not. |
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After a pleasant dinner (some people had just arrived in Paris from the US
this morning, so nothing fancy was planned), we were on our way down the
river to Caen. |
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