Tag: france

day 6 – notre dame, market, louvre, pompidou, dinner, gardens, night on the sienne

as you can probably tell by the title of this post this has been quite a long day with a lot of things happening. this is what happens when it only gets dark by 11pm and it gets light at 6am… your days seem unbelievably long. and of course being on vacation doesn’t hurt either.

i woke up first and not as early as i’d have liked – i was supposed to wake up at 8 in order to get to notre dame before the line ups; alas the 2am falling asleep ensured that i really didn’t get out of bed until 8:40, thus getting out of the house by 9:10. k was still asleep when i left.

i tried to hit up the local market on my way out of our area but nothing seemed to be there, and i thought i had the wrong square. on my walk to the subway found another bakery, where the croissants were FAR more delicious – thus ensuring i have a quick snack later on in my line up for notre dame.

going to notre dame alone really reminded me how much more paranoid i am when i travel by myself. though i enjoy the lack of accountability (stop and go as i wish) it is more unnerving to be by yourself. i played the parisian role by reading on the metro while huddling in the corner. karmun wisely slept in and left me to stand the line up (yes, line up 30 mins prior to opening – insane!) and climb the stairs (400 something of those) by myself. i don’t blame her – i wouldn’t and haven’t cared to go up last few times in paris either, but i really wanted those gargoyle photos.

notre dame itself, outside of the stair climb, was pretty much as expected. i had a cute chat with the security guard about the ebook – not because he thought its a problem, but just because he saw me reading it and got curious. that thing provokes friends like no other – everyone wants to look at it and touch it. its awesome!

the climb reminded me that after paris i’m probably going to have mad toned legs, because of all the climbing up and down from the subways, into the subways, from our apartment, into our apartment, from views and sights, into views and sights, from museums, into museums, from stores, into stores, etcetcetc – these people don’t like their gyms but love their stairs.

the views up top were as spectacular as promised; photos – eh, we’ll see – i definitely loved the gargoyles. if i ever have a balcony i’m definitely getting a few gargoyles – they are actually really cute. i even saw one that looked like an elephaunt – how awesome is that?

quickly getting home after picking up a few small bottles of wine for tonight put me home at 12:15 – pretty early for having checked off a landmark of the day’s list of activities. k slept in and so we went to have a very Nice lunch in the nearby square – it was somewhat pricey, but very good. it was the nicest meal we’ve had so far; to be honest though i enjoyed the cheaper food in other restaurants a bit more. i like the classic french bistro fare. before we sat down for lunch we noticed the market that i was looking for earlier in the morning  – it was now open, so we walked around.

markets seem to be very similar between all cities in europe. though they change depending on the size of the city  and the language, the essentials are always there. fish, cheese, meat, veggies, fruit, cheapo clothes.

clothes – nah, nada

fruits – cherries

veggies – nah, nada

cheese – yes, a bit, 50g

meat – procuitto, yes, a bit, 100g

c’est tout. quick and efficient.

we dropped off the produce at home after lunch and went on to louvre. louvre was the same as usual – though we got a lot of awesome photos of horribly freaky painted babies (painted as in, on the paintings), i got really stressed out and overwhelemed in my usual fashion, so  we wrapped it up pretty quick and got out of there. all told for louvre it was 2 hrs – i guess i’ll keep that limit in mind next time i come!

we headed to pompidou area, and prior to going to the museum took a long, relaxed coffee & coke at a nearby area. it certainly helped restore our spirits and renergize us for another museum.

pompidou was fun – i liked a few exhibits:

  • a lot of picasso – nice to see.
  • fauvres – like old friends, happy to see again
  • duchamp’s ready mades
  • some very modern art where the artist cut a hole in the ceiling in a very geometric shape and then placed either the ceiling or white cubist/triangular pieces shaped like it on the floor. basically a great piece of installation art.
  • a video of a woman violently combing herself and repeating “art must be beautiful. artist must be beautiful.” it actually made quite an impression on me.
  • some modern furniture/industrial design, but not enough. i should hit up some industrial design museums next time or maybe even find some in toronto.

after pompidou we walked around the area, which turned out to be super sketchy. we got hungry and picked the restaurant too quickly and got our first major major rip off of the trip – not TOO Bad of a rip off, but still. the food was HORRENDOUS, like, unbelievably bad. so bad we actually shook our heads at some tourists that came up behind us and thus disuaded them from sitting down. a table near us sent their food back. we sure were happy to have the market meats back home at this point. though the atrocious dinner provided us some energy to get home, ugh, NEVER AGAIN a place with an english menu.

it really was so bad it became funny. even the wine was watered down. terrible.

anyway. after the terrible, terrible place, from which we ran as fast as we could – we got home, picked up our snacks, and finished them in front of the tuileries garden fountain. towards the end of our meal a very nice, friendly, normal guy near us chatted us up – and i mean, very normally. (we tried to grab a few chairs and they were sniped, so he commented how chairs are expensive around here).

after he tried to open my wine and failed, we got kicked out of the gardens because they were closing, so we ended up finish our meal and my wine on a nearby pedestrian bridge – which was really, really fun! it was great to meet a non creepy local, and he genuinely was very nice. we all chatted amicably for about an hour and then he left home and i realized my wallet was missing, so we rushed back to the apartment.

before ya’ll freak out:

1) i mentioned i’m married as soon as it seemed that he’s not a creepster that we’re trying to get rid of

2) wallet was left at home

3) we’re being smart and not stupid

anyway, so all was good; we came home, i copied photos, i blogged, and now to read and then sleep in slightly.

plan for the last day is somewhat vague right now. i want to sleep in until 10am, because i plan to stay up until our flight – our flight is at 9:40 so we should be in the cab by 7am at least, and given how its 1:20 as i’m blogging this i think i’ll be ok if i have a cup of coffee around 10-11pm. this way i should pass out on the flight and arrive nice and switched back.

we want to visit place dus vosges/marais; see dept. store bon marche; go for drinks in the montparnasse; get a sunset photo of eiffel tower over river (i’m the driving force behind THAT one… its a pain because i know what photo i want but dont know where i can get it from); and generally have a good time on our last day. hopefully we’ll fit it all in.

the only thing i know, is that the food in that place SUCKED MAJORLY. ugh. at least our tourist karma has been fulfilled.

day 5 – c&a, orsay, eiffel, inspiration strikes

    day 5 started pretty freaking late, given the 2am bed time. we got up at 9 am (karmun) and 10 am (me), feeling pretty groggy. dragged ourselves back into the shopping area and ended up in the same breakfast places as the one the day before – but too late for breakfast, but that point it became almost lunch time. i had a delicious salad with procuitto, melon, soft cheese and tomatoes; karmun had a chicken club as to keep her delicate system healthy. the food was good, and after lunch we split up for our respective goals.

    one positive thing about today, though i am still ugly coughing and we’re both somewhat “off”, karmun is back to feeling much better. me? eeh, i’m hanging in there.

    our respective goals were – c&a for me; lafayette for karmun. 1-2:30pm we hunted and hunted. i went through 4 levels of that store; found nothing for mom; found 1 jacket for me (woo), and a shirt when i was waiting for k back at our meeting place.

    zara was unsucessful.

    i still feel dissatisfied about lack of shoe success; that said after talking about fashion and shopping with karmun tonight i realize that a lot of it stems from my lack of looking. an 80 eu pair of shoes is 130 cad. i never buy shoes that expensive in canada; if i did i would likely – and often surely could – find the type of thing that i am looking for (cute, high quality, stylish flat, etc.). the goal was to find the same thing cheaper – and that was not THAT successful. i did get lucky with my zara high heeled pair.

    after shopping we regrouped and headed home for a quick breather (that’s when i blogged day 4). after the breather we went off to orsay.

    aah, orsay. my favourite museum; the impressionists will always sit dear in my heart. we lolled around there until they closed and kicked everyone out. k enjoyed the impressionists and wasn’t too obviously bothered (well, truth be told she wasn’t bothered at all – very patient girl) with my insestant chattering about “they did this because of…” and “look at the way that he painted the light here it is so hard because…” and “oh my god look at how claustraphobic this feels!” and “LOOK AT MY GOOSEBUMPS” (which i seriously said at least 3 times). apparently i’m the type of person who gets goosebumps around great art.

    maybe it was the AC.

    i really think it was the art, though.

    the lillies weren’t on show this time, but k fell in love with “Woman with a Parasol”, both of them (1, 2) – i think she liked 1 more.

    after we got kicked out, we subwayed it in another crazy hot subway car to the eiffel tower. walked around, took photos, had coke and a crepe, and headed back home.

    sunset went into full swing by this point. after eiffel we went onto this huge ferris wheel, and this is when my inspiration woke up and i got a lot of excellent photos. as we came down, renewed and somehow inspired i actually got some excellent photos as we crossed the louvre, the river, slowly making our way to the restaurant for a quick bite to eat.

    the dinner was excellent; i had meat of the day (blood sausage in wine reduction with apples and mashed potatoes) and k had fish of the day (no idea). we wrapped up at 11, headed back and got stuck again on the bridge because it was too freaking beautiful.

    day 5 was the most productive day photography wise. and probably least successful sleep wise.

    you must understand, its light here until 10pm, how in the world are we supposed to go back home before 11? ofcourse now its almost 1am and k still has to blog, so i sign off.

    day 4 – galeries lafayette and montmartre

    day 4 started off pretty poorly. i woke up with a headache, grumpy as all, feeling sick and tired. this despite going to bed very early – i got 10 hours of sleep, but the sleep was very “low quality” – i kept tossing and turning and waking up every time i do so.

    i got up first, blogged, woke up, showered, karmun got up around 9am and we again fairly quickly and efficiently got our butts out the door by 9:30.

    walking away from the touristy area where we’re staying we headed towards paris’ largest department store – galeries lafayette. a huge department store, full of fancy, designer, unique and other clothes, shoes, bags and anything you can dream of. their shoe floor was mindblowing on several levels. it was really quite insane.

    but i’m getting ahead of myself! each morning i wake up grumpy until i have my coffee, and in general because we dive into high energy action quickly after eating we must have breakfast. we found a cute little place near the store where the breakfast for the 2 of us was not only 5 eu cheaper, but also much, much better. compare and contrast:

    • louvre area 10eu gets you: a coffee, a croissant OR toast (and they were out of croissants and the toast was very very lame), a little plastic “airplane style” box of jam, orange juice, butter.
    • more french oriented dept. store area 7.50eu gets you: a coffee, a croissant, a great baguette toast, a small glass jar of jam, orange juice, butter.

    the cafe was very cute otherwise as well. a funny highlight – as we sat and ate i saw a little boy with a russian grandma? (mom? looked too old to be his mom, boy was 7-8 yrs old…) walk in. she perched on the edge of the outer seating area, and instructed him in a classically Russian way to take a photo. then, she actually walked in deeper and posed against the curtains that framed the entrance to the cafe, and he took another photo. and then they ran away. they didn’t even have anything to drink in the stupid cafe, and trust me, the cafe was not even that remarkable!!! ah, hilarious.

    in all ways it was a lovely breakfast. and karmun was feeling better; i felt better too upon taking advil cold & sinus. after munching away and waking up we ran through the galeries for women, galeries for men, c&a, another dept store (name forgotten, next to the galeries), galeries for the house, all in about 3 hours.

    while most things were madly out of my price range the memorable highlight was indeed the shoe floor. the galeries for maison (for the home) was surprisingly good – though a lot of stuff, or most of it, is available in canada, it was great to see a lot of the familiar brands close and side by side. i can tell you guys, we’re damn lucky – the mid century classic remakes that are produced in europe are about 3 times more expensive.

    i also saw my favourite elephaunt – http://www.dwr.com/product/designers/d-g/charles-ray-eames/eames-elephant.do?sortby=ourPicks – very very cute and costs .. 300 eu. at the exchange rate, that’s insane compared to the above, especially given how both are manufactured by licensed authentic makers.

    after speeding through the dept stores we decided we’ll split up and return tomorrow – me, to cover the cheaper and more “old lady” c&a, and karmun to cover in detail the dept store which is not in my reality for most clothes. next on our list was to hit up the area where we had the nice authentic dinner 2 days ago.

    on the way to our dinner we passed by a few shoe and clothing stores where i noticed some stuff that i really liked – a pair of cream flats for 30eu and a black dress for 35eu. the general area was close to a bunch of japanese eateries. by guess and intution we managed to cross from the dept stores into that area and actually find all the stores we saw before.

    side note. paris is really hard to navigate because nothing is paralelle. it is very web like; all streets are diagonal; and for my intuition, when i think i’m going in the right direction in reality, like a man lost in the desert, i’m slowly veering off course without knowing it. i.e. i’ll think i’m going towards point A and i’ll arrive at point B 15 minutes walk from A – but on the same X axis. its pretty frustrating because usually i feel comfortable orienting myself by memory. well, finally this border was broken – i think i’m getting the hang of it!

    as we were “crossing” into the other area we found some burger/meat place that was (a) right there when we (really, i am the driving force for “exhausted-can’t-stand-up-anymore”, so i should say “i” instead of “we”) needed it, and (b) seemed reasonably cheap. i ate a burger which was nice – i needed some beef to get me standing – and i had a glass of white (which always helps, don’t you know), karmun had some beef sticks and the usual coke. it came at a great (reasonable) cost and was a good break in the day.

    after lunch we successfully got into the area and very quickly found the right stores. i tried on the shoes, liked them, bought them, and the dress, liked it, bought it. by this point it was getting close to 5-6pm, so we headed back to drop off groceries and take a quick breather.

    after the fast -superfast- breather, off we went for karmun’s gucci store on rue Saint Honore. it was actually quite funny inside the store, because i was dress “ghetto” – white skirt, some fairly rumpled top, cheapo flats, and karmun actually put on the high heels to test them out so she look fabulous. i’m pretty sure the gucci guy thought either i’m the sugar moma, or the assistant to some chinese soap opera star.

    on the way there we stopped in some boutique little place and karmun bought a pair of really gorgeous, unique, french, beautiful, and possibly slightly overpriced shoes. (she doesn’t care what i say. she knows!)

    dropping her purchases off, we headed out to montemarte – karmun for the first time, and me for the 3rd. subway was inbelievably, insanely hot – no air movement, tonnes of people. i broke into an itchy sweat within 10 seconds of standing inside that cab, it was absolutely unbelievable. the weather has generally been sunny and hot – i’m not sure if we’re picking up color, but definitely not losing it.

    at the abessess subway station we ended up being the complete noobs by taking the stairs. no wonder there was an insane lineup for the elevator – the freaking stairs had 10345425098427 flights on them. we had to stop twice. and this is AFTER we’ve gained stamina from our 4th floor walk up!!! looking online, looks like we’re the noobs. ah well. excersize :-) turns out its the deepest subway station in paris. the name should’ve hinted…

    montemarte was lovely as usual. i drank my tiny (375ml) bottle of riesling; we ate croissants and cherry tomatoes; listened to the guitarists and tried to spy the pickpocketers. we even bargained down a caricature/artist guy to a very cheap price to paint the two of us :-) we promised not to tell how much so that he can try to get the full price from others. funny!

    the caricature is adorable and shall be uploaded.

    he (the painter) was a very enterntaining and animated guy, chatting to us about pickpocketers, watches, languages, other travellers (supposedly some insane russian couple paid him 150eu for the drawing of the 2 of them. i find it REALLY hard to believe!).

    when the sun got low enough we walked over to the moulin rouge – first time for both of us – and yes, very creepy area. no wonder i hadn’t been there before :-) but near the moulin rouge, 2 police cars, metro 30 seconds away, and lots of tourists who looked far more hapless than us (we are always clutching at our bags like mad). after hanging out there we went home, and high on good weather, good mood, and good health stayed up until 1am drinking tea and wine at the local corner bar (until they basically kicked us out).

    sleep came at 2:30am. my poor, jetlagged head probably can’t figure out what the hell am i trying to do with the shifting sleep times by 6 hrs each night.

    Paris – first few hours

    A few notes on Paris in the first few hours…

  • cab was cheaper than expected…
  • my bank isn’t giving me enough money
  • the city is every bit heartbreakingly beautiful as i remember. how i long to live here one day….
  • wherever you walk, there’s history. the buildin in which our apartment is housed is from the 17th century. they renovated it but left the original beams in.
  • paris is clearly a city of fashion. looking out the window it looks like theres a sewing school – there is a room full of dress makers dummies
  • K found the best place to stay. louvre is literally 2 minutes away; i accidentally walked there when i was looking for a supermarket.
  • when i was walking away from louvre, a woman stopped me and started asking “Louvre?? Louvre??” and i politely replied “Uhm, oui – parlez vous Francais..? Anglais?..” to which she again said “Louvre?? Louvre?”” so I asked “Do you speak English?” and she said “Yes! English!” so I explained where the entrance is, and how to get there. She thanked me and then said that my English is “beautiful”. I honestly replied that I’m from Canada. But – sweet! I look French!! At least to non French people!! :-)
  • the bread is so freaking awesome its not even funny. i’m afraid to try the croissants.
  • jet lag is totally messing with my head. its 1:30pm and i’m crazy sleepy. going to go nap soon.
  • i love, love, love, love LOVE this city. it pains me how much i love it. the building across the street from my balcony has a stone medallion at the top that says “1840 1917”, and is madly decorated with carvings. too gorgeous.