A day in Paris

Today, I spent the full day in Paris.  This is my first attempt at posting a video and it's from the end of the day when we took the Seine cruise.  After dark, on every hour, the Eiffel Tower isn't just illuminated - it sparkles.  So this video is from when we cruised by at 10pm.  Hopefully it will play for you - let me know in the comments if it doesn't.  

Me at the Eiffel Tower

We started the day with a bus tour that took us through all of the major Paris attractions - the Champs d'Elysée, a fancy designer street where the Plaza Athenée hotel is located (this hotel has been in many movies), the Arc du Triomphe, the "Les Invalides" military hospital/place where Napolean is buried, the Concorde square and the Grand and Petit Palais.  I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but there is a LOT to see in Paris.  We also took a slight break from Hitler to hear about the exploits of Napolean - another European megalomaniac with narcissistic personality disorder. 

Then we went directly to the Eiffel Tower to meet our French local guide.  She took us to the 2nd floor (we didn't have tickets to go all the way to the top) and we got about 20 minutes up there.  One thing I never knew about Paris is that skyscrapers are outlawed and there is only one (not sure why the exception).  There is a suburb called "La Defense" that is all skyscrapers and that is where my hotel is - it's apparently some kind of business/commercial centre and since it's not actual Paris, the skyscrapers are allowed there.  In any case, Paris is all low-rise buildings and fancy historical cathedrals and other structures.  Almost everything is made out of a white stone and has iron wrought balconies on every window. It really makes the city unique.

Before you go into the Eiffel Tower, there are all kinds of African guys constantly coming up to you to sell cheap Eiffel Tower statues and scarves with maps of Paris, as well as watches with the Eiffel Tower on the face (and many of my tour companions bought these, but I honestly don't know why) - and that's not even to mention the gypsies who come up to you to take a fake survey (they always start by asking "do you speak English?" and then if you take their survey, they suddenly start asking for money and/or one of their friends is helping themselves to stuff in your purse while you're not paying attention). You're supposed to just say "Non!" very forcefully and walk away.  What was pretty hilarious though was one of these gypsies approached one of the Australian guys on the trip and asked him if he spoke English, and he completely seriously turned around and said in a thick Aussie accent, "No I don't speak English" and walked away - she looked utterly confused, but it was hysterical to watch.

After the Eiffel Tower, we went for a walk around the Latin Quarter.  I had assumed this meant it was where the Spanish live in Paris.  Wrong.  It is just because in the olden days, a lot of different cultures lived in this quarter of Paris and the only language they had in common was Latin, so that is what they spoke.  Nowadays, it's a student area since it is near the Sorbonne and there are loads of restaurants from many different ethnicities. After that, we visited Notre Dame cathedral - another fancy church on my "fancy churches of Europe" tour.  

Once we were released into the wild for the afternoon, I went for lunch at a nearby café because I was starving.  I decided to be very French and order a "Croque Monsieur" (for those of you who don't know, that's a piece of bread with ham on it and then covered in cheese and toasted.  It came with fries and a salad, but the croque monsieur was so filling, I barely ate the other items.  The fun thing about cafés in Paris (and other parts of France because it was like this in Nice too) is that they have these tables on the patio that basically face out with no chairs on the other side, so you can people watch.  So if you're one or even if you're two, you all sit on the same side of the table and then people watch as you have your drink or eat your lunch.  I quite like it! I wish they did this in Canada.  It also seems to be completely normal to have lunch or dinner for one doing this method and you don't seem so lonely, although on this trip, I've met so many people that I haven't dined alone more than a handful of times.  In this picture, I had tour mates on each side.  

McDonald's menu in France

And not to disappoint, although I don't believe I reported in on Switzerland McDonald's (basically it was the same as Austria - they had fried breaded shrimp on the menu and a weird "Quinoa burger" which I guess was for vegetarians), I checked out France McDonald's, or as they like to call it there - "McDo's".  So for one thing, I love that the combo meals are called "Big Tasty Party" instead of combos and they have all the normal choices of burgers and chicken burgers, but it's a party! LOL.  They also have some fish burgers under a menu called "American Summer" which includes something called a "Hawaii and fish burger" and other variations.  They then have their 2 Euro menu which includes things such as the following - 

Le Charolais looks to be just a cheeseburger, but it's listed as being made from chopped steak from the Charolais cows which I think are the white cows I saw all over France when we were driving in.  I also love the Le Petit Hot Dog.  Hilarious.  The one thing that is missing that was there, but I couldn't find in pictures is the Croque McDo.  It's basically a small Croque Monsieur (see what I ate in my lunch pic above) and it's on the value menu.

Young people drinking wine on the left and right bank

After I ate lunch, I had about four hours of free time and I went to Le Marais and the Centre Pompidou on Isaac's suggestion.  The Centre Pompidou is a modern art museum and I got to see Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Claus Oldenberg, Mark Rothko and many others - it is always cool to see the things you studied in art history in high school live and in person.  Then I walked around Le Marais (it was a very lovely neighbourhood) and sat at another café (facing out as usual) to have a drink.

Then I caught the Paris Metro (the subway) to where the tour group was meeting.  I was quite impressed with myself for navigating a subway in another language, but I've already mastered Swiss Rail and taken the subway in Montreal (and I understand French fairly well anyway - so it's not like this was in a language that was super foreign to me), so this really wasn't that difficult (plus the Paris Metro is just as easy as the London Underground).  We had dinner and then we went on a Seine Cruise.  I have no more pictures of that since my phone was near dead and my camera WAS dead. I managed to get the video of the sparkling Eiffel tower and the picture above - there were young people lining both sides of the Seine just having a chill Thursday night drinking wine by the river with friends - I would love to do that some day.  In Ontario, you couldn't cuz of the insane liquor laws.  

Anyway, that's the end of Trafalgar's European Adventure tour.  Tomorrow we have an insane 6am wakeup call and I have to be on the bus by 7:15am.  We start by taking the majority of our group to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to go home.  Then a smaller group of us heads back to London.  I will then head over to my AirBNB (in the same place as before - near Dina) and then I am going to have a chill evening with Dina and go to bed fairly early.  I have had a great voyage this past two and a half weeks, but my feet are killing me and I need to catch up on my sleep!  Until tomorrow!