Our trip to Paris - Day 1 (or, God damn I write a lot)

After looking online for over a week, and exchanging emails and phone calls with SBB to get a definite quote, I booked our tickets for Paris on Wednesday the 11th. When looking at our options for trains, I noticed an interesting detail. There was a train that left at 5:35am and one that left at 7:17am. I soon discovered that the train leaving at 5:35 was CHF 100 cheaper than the latter, so I pretty much had my mind made up for me. The only problem with catching a train at that time is the Genevan public transportation system. As I have stated, this city is quite boring and closes shop very early, so most of the buses stop running at midnight and don’t start up again until 5:30am. Since we wanted to be there by 5:00 and the earliest bus around here doesn’t come until 5:12, we needed an alternative option. Luckily, Marc – the guy who runs the Knox Centre – told us that we could catch a relatively inexpensive cab, and two other people in our group who were catching a 6:15 train agreed to split it with us. Marc called and set it up for us, so we didn’t have to worry about giving out directions in French. Something finally fell into place.

I went to bed at about 9:30pm Thursday night, as I needed to get up at 4 the next morning. Unfortunately, the girls next to me continued to talk quite loudly with their door open until 11:00pm, which prevented me from falling asleep. When I finally did get to sleep, I woke up at 2:30am because my ears were killing me. I already had a cold, so I was worried that I might have gotten a double ear infection as well. Fortunately this would prove to not be the case, but it was not a very good omen nonetheless. I couldn’t fall back asleep, so when my alarm went off at 4, I was going on about 3-3 ½ hours with a long, long day ahead of me. We got our stuff together and headed outside at 4:35, to find the cab driver waiting for us in the parking lot. Now, there are no standard cabs in Geneva, the guys just drive whatever car they have and stick a light on top of it and a meter in the dashboard. This car was a relatively small sedan, and we had a tough time squeezing into it. Jason, who is 6’7”, tried to fit in the front seat, but his knees were somewhere up around his throat. I barely managed to climb into the back seat. The cab ride was very short, as the roads were almost completely empty, and it ended up only costing CHF 27; we split it four ways and left the guys like CHF 3-4 as a tip. I was pleasantly surprised.

We parted ways with Jason and Lisa and headed to our gate. The train showed up at about 5:33, so we climbed on board. The train ride was pretty uneventful; I tried to read for a little while and then gave up. We stopped at three small towns in France before we hit the countryside and started to pick up speed. The TGV stands for train à grande vitesse (anglicized to the “Train of Great Velocity”), and it lives up to its name. It covers the 335 mile-driving distance in 3 ½ hours. There were a couple of fairly skanky French girls in across the aisle from us who were playing with their phones and iPods and giggling the whole ride. When we started getting close to Paris, they began liberally applying makeup. The one girl spent like 15 minutes putting mascara on each eye. It was a bit excessive, and made me think of the late-90s SNL game show skit “Old French Whores.”

We finally got into Paris at 9:03, right as scheduled, and climbed out into the Gare-de-Lyon. Train stations are usually pretty cool in Europe, and this one was no exception. It has a very impressive glass canopy ceiling and some ornate decorations. We got breakfast – coffee and a croissant – at a place called Uppercrust (they have it at the Geneva train station too), and headed out in search of an ATM. We found one across the street, got out 80 Euros a piece, and started following the signs towards the Place de la Bastille, the former home of the infamous prison. At first the signs were a little confusing and we retraced our steps, but we eventually found what we were looking for. There is a large marble column in the center of a traffic circle with a gold angel statue on top and a bunch of names carved in the sides. Surprisingly, the column seems to have nothing at all to do with the storming of the Bastille, as it was built in the 1830s and all the dates deal with that period, not the Revolution.

After seeing this, we started walking down the Rue St. Antoine. Ashley wanted to go to the Jardin Vincennes, which is the largest park in Paris and houses a huge castle, but the weather was kind of crappy, and I soon realized that we were heading away from downtown, which I didn’t want to do. We turned around after about 20 minutes and headed back to the Place de la Bastille. After that, we consulted the small maps that I had torn out of my Let’s Go Western Europe book, and found our way toward downtown. We saw a couple of pretty cool cathedrals on the way (St. Therese & St. Paul I think), and eventually found our way to the Place des Vosges, which is the oldest square in the city. King Henri VI built the square in 1604, first erecting a royal residence on the site, then surrounding the small area with a square set of matching buildings. I had seen this place on TV, so I was pretty interested in checking it out. Victor Hugo also lived in one of the buildings while he wrote Les Misérables, and his house is now museum. We walked in but decided we didn’t want to pay the 6 euro entry fee per person, so we headed back out. There was a high school located just outside of the square, and I guess that school was on a break or something, because there were hundreds of teenagers hanging out in the area. I could tell that I was in France, because literally 98% of them were puffing away on a cigarette. And I though the Swiss smoked a lot.

After we left Place des Vosges, we continued on our way towards downtown. We eventually ran into one of the major streets in the area, and started seeing a number of enormous, extremely impressive buildings, including the Hôtel de Ville, which is Paris’ town hall (for some reason, all French-influenced cities seem to call their town halls this, including Geneva). The Hôtel de Ville is an enormous and very ornate building, in the Beaux Arts style that Paris is known for, and features a life-size statue of every one of the city’s mayors around its exterior. We took a bunch of pictures of the building, and continued walking down the street. We began to notice that we were starting to see some of the most notable structures in the city, including Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chappelle. As we continued down the road, we caught our first glimpse of the Seine and were able to start taking in the massive scale of the city. After being stuck in Geneva for almost six weeks, a relatively small and unimpressive town, walking through Paris for the first time was almost a bit overwhelming. I have been to some large cities, but I haven’t really gotten a chance to see much of them. Other than Philadelphia and Washington DC, this was my first chance to really explore a really large metropolis.

About a half-mile and ten minutes later, we arrived at the very center of Paris, the Île de la Cité, and I found one of the buildings that I really wanted to see, La Conciergerie. It was originally known as the Palais de la Cité, a 14th century royal residence, but it was converted into perhaps the most notorious, albeit somewhat lesser-known, prison complexes in Paris. I wrote my term paper for historiography last semester on the Reign of Terror and Maximilien Robespierre, so I have become pretty obsessed with the French Revolution. Conciergerie was the last building that the most famous prisoners of the Revolution – Danton, des Moulins & the Girondins, Fouquier-Tinville, Robespierre himself, and Marie Antoinette. It also later held Napoleon III after he fell out of favor. The inside of the building is a very imposing Romanesque structure, filled with vaulted ceilings and huge colonnades. All the stuff from the Revolution is contained on the one side of the prison. They have some mock cells set up, along with a list of the 3,000+ people executed in Paris and some cases containing memorabilia from Robespierre and his contemporaries. But the real center of attention is, unfortunately, the royal chapel and Marie Antoinette’s cell. I was hoping to just walk into the cell, which is rigged up with furniture and manikins, take some pictures and leave, but there was a tour group of about 25 English people and this annoying guide. We literally waited for this woman in this small, cramped viewing area for 20 minutes, while she rambled on and on with some sob story about how hard life was for the queen while in the prison. She regaled us with story after story about how she had migraines and a hormonal imbalance, about how she had to change in front of her guards, about how she had a hard time reading because she wasn’t allowed to have glasses, and about how her aide had to bring her special water from a spring in the country because she couldn’t digest the Parisian water (apparently this is quite common; Ashley told me it is full of magnesium, which is terrible on digestion, so I drank bottled water all weekend).

The woman was annoying and kind of a bitch, and I was relieved when she finally finished her rant. We took some pictures of the cell and made our way back through the gift shop and back outside. By this point, carrying around our bags was starting to take its toll. Our book bags were full of our stuff for the weekend, and we couldn’t check into our hotel until 2:30pm. This left us with 5 ½ hours of walking around with nowhere to stay, and it got difficult. I pulled the straps so tight to take the weight off my shoulders that I could barely move my arms. When I reached back to grab my water bottle, I’m pretty sure that I pulled a muscle in my next, which just compounded matters.

After La Conciergerie, we continued heading through downtown. We walked past Saint-Chappelle, the Palais de Justice, and Notre-Dame, then started walking down the quay alongside the Seine. Despite the weather, the views were pretty impressive. We continued walking west along the river, seeing a ton of sights, including the Pont Neuf, the Institute de France, Tour St.-Jacques, one of the Opera houses, the Grand Palais, and the Louvre. When we reached the bridge that crosses over to the Louvre, we finally found a bus that would take us to our hotel, the 95. It was about 1:45 at this time, so we decided to head towards the hotel and try to check in. Our hotel was extremely far south of the city center – 17 bus stops to be exact – and we kind of a had a hard time finding it, as the French don’t seem to think that they should number their streets logically. The hotel was at 62 Rue de Morillions, and the bus dropped us off at around 45. We walked down the street, since I saw 59 and 65, but there was no 62 to be found. Ashley suggested that we walk in the opposite direction to look for it, which proved to be a good decision. We found the hotel; for some reason 62 was across the street from 87. Makes sense.

When we checked into the hotel, I was surprised to learn from the guy at the front desk that breakfast would cost us 9,50 Euros per person, even though Ashley paid an extra euro a night to get the online bed & breakfast special. I didn’t press the point, because it was only 2 Euros, and there is a pretty good bakery just down the street where we had breakfast each morning, but I would find out at checkout that this guy was full of shit and breakfast was included. I love it when people try to scam me for being an American. After we got settled into our room, which was quite modest, and rested for a little while, we decided to head down to the Louvre, as it is free after 6pm on Fridays for people younger than 26. The hotel provided us with a map, which would come in handy throughout the weekend, and we knew that we just needed to hop on the 95, and it was a straight shot to the museum. I knew that the Louvre is absolutely huge, and I figured it was be extremely crowded, since it was Friday night on Valentine’s Day weekend, but we decided we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit it.

We got the Louvre around 5pm and walked around outside. The place is absolutely massive and incredibly cool. The building is covered in statues, arches, colonnades, etc. There is a replica of the Brandenburg Gate and the Jardin de Tuilieries just across the square. Regardless of whatever Parisians think, the I.M. Pei glass pyramids are really, really cool. After walking around outside and snapping pictures, we decided to look for something to eat. We found a small restaurant across that street that had take out pizzas, so we picked one up for 10 Euros and ate it on against a crowd control fence outside. It was very good, but it was interesting to eat, since we didn’t have napkins and it wasn’t precut. Then we headed back into the Louvre, took a few more pictures, and took the escalator downstairs.

The place was mobbed with people, and the lines to get tickets were probably 30-45 minutes long. Fortunately the Friday youth deal means that you can just walk in without a ticket; all you have to do is show identification. We decided to head into the Sully wing to see the two most recognizable pieces – the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. The antiquities section included an amazing collection of statues dating from Greece, Rome, and Egypt. There were several neoclassical sculptures that were from the 17th-19th centuries as well. The collection included statues of several Roman emperors, including Augustus, Claudius, Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Septimus Severus; there were also statues of Zeus, Alexander the Great, Sappho, and a number of other prominent figures. I was surprised that, despite the massive crowds around, there were relatively few people in the room with the Venus de Milo. The statue was at the beginning of the most ornate sections of the antiquities sections; there were statues and murals painted on the ceilings that, in some instances, were more impressive than the art works themselves. Some guy asked me to take a picture of him with the statue, but the moment that I went to press the button, his battery died and the camera shut off. I felt pretty bad for him; that sucks.

After walking through most of the sculptures, we headed up to the Italian paintings section, where the da Vinci paintings are located. We walked through a couple of rooms with some Renaissance era paintings, and then stepped into the appropriately-named Grand Hall. This corridor was huge and was covered in paintings, including some of da Vinci’s most famous, like the Madonna of the Rocks. We were almost overwhelmed. There were paintings and people everywhere; it was too much to process at once. We followed the huge crowds into a room just off the main gallery, which contained several paintings, most notably the Mona Lisa. The tourists in that room were just out of control. There were hundreds of people vying for position to stand near the velvet rope that stands about 15 feet away, and take a picture of the painting, which is protected by bullet-proof glass. Proper etiquette, along with common sense, dictates that you don’t use the flash on your camera at an art museum. Try telling that to the people at the Louvre. There were flashes going off left and right, which was extremely irritating. I trust that the guides are telling the truth when they say that the flash can hurt the paintings, and a number of them don’t have any sort of glass or plastic to protect them. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the Mona Lisa was disappointing, like everyone else does. It was pretty cool to see it, and I thought it looked a lot better in person, but the mob surrounding me and the crazy security measures to keep people away from it were pretty annoying.

I’ve always hated going to art museums with people who don’t really want to be there to appreciate the art, and my tastes were reaffirmed that night. In the room along with the Mona Lisa were a number of awesome works, including a gigantic painting of the wedding feast at Cana. This painting must have been 20 feet tall and about 30 feet wide. The artist probably painted at least 100 different life-sized people, yet pretty much no one paid any attention to it, just because they were told to fawn over the Mona Lisa, which is about 12”x18”. After getting tired of the crowd in the room, we headed into another gallery containing some French art from the 17th-18th centuries. There was also a special exhibit of three paintings by a Chinese artist that was called The Death of the Mona Lisa. The guy used different shades of white and gray to paint three massive portraits. The one in the center was a recreation of the Mona Lisa, and it was flanked on each side by two very realistic images of impoverished men who had been the victims of war and social strife. The images really looked like black-and-white photographs. It was interesting that the Louvre would be willing to critique its most famous painting with a modern social commentary, and I thought it was very well done.

Next to this room were two rooms of French paintings, including one room that I really wanted to see – the room with David’s paintings. We saw the gigantic painting of Napoleon’s coronation and two paintings that covered stuff we learned in Latin class. The first was a painting of the Sabine women trying to protect their Roman husbands from their avenging fathers and husbands. The second was one that I have wanted to see since I first noticed it in Latin I and since we talked about the story in Latin III – the Oath of the Horatii.

Once we had seen David’s works, we both realized that we were really tired. We had been awake since 4am and walking around since 9am. I was sick, and I know that Ashley was getting sick, so that just added another element. I had begun to notice while we were at the hotel that my right eye was kind of sore. When we got to the Louvre, it started to get more irritated and began to run a lot. It got worse and worse throughout the night as I kept touching and further irritating it; by the time we left, it was drooping, bloodshot, and there was puss building up. I had gotten not just one, but two eye infections from my contacts. I had planned to change them about two weeks before, but I was worried about putting in my last pair before mom got me my new set, so I kept the old ones in. I learned my lesson the hard way, and have been wearing glasses ever since.

After we left the Louvre at about 8:30, we headed straight back to the hotel. I was in pretty bad shape by this time. Both of my eyes were infected, I was coughing like a coal miner, I had no voice, and my nose was running like crazy. When we got back to the hotel, we pretty much went to bed right away. We were both exhausted from the long day, and the illness wasn’t helping. I didn’t sleep much that night, as I constantly woke up to cough (I have since found out I had bronchitis). I am pretty sure that I kept Ashley up most of the night as well, with the lovely noises that I made from coughing and blowing my nose. Despite the fact that I was sick as shit, and the day was extremely long and tiring, spending Friday in Paris sure beat the hell out of spending it in Geneva. All the stuff that we did kept me fairly content, so I didn’t feel the need to bitch about how much the day sucked, like I probably would have had I gone to bed in my closet-sized room at the Knox Centre. I’ll cover days two and three in my next post (or two).