EUROTRIP

illustration by Tania Kaufmann

08-18-10

Day 6, 7 and 8 : Paris

Day 6 Paris

Eurorail whisked us under the english channel to our place in the 4em of Paris. Upon arrival, we realize there is no way to contact our host except by phone, but the pay phones we find require credit cards with embedded chips. The only solution is to pop a SIM card into one of our iPhones and make an expensive call.

I am starting to see the benefits of having a local SIM and so I am going to check the price of these.

After being shown the room, we are left with only one key and are told the previous guests have the electronic key to the building door, and will deposit it in a mailbox when they return for their luggage. Our host then promptly leaves for the south of France. Making the best of the situation, I leave Jenni in the room and head off in search of a bank and groceries. As i am walking back up the street I hear a frantic voice calling to me from a window. Seems I locked Jenni *inside* the room, and neglected to tell her that I had arranged with some workmen downstairs that they would keep the building door open for my return.

After the tearful rescue, we head to the Eiffel tower for a nighttime bike tour of Paris, which ended with a boat ride along the Seine. Its great way to see lots of Paris in a short amount of time.

Day 7 Neither of us had been to the Orsay gallery so we picked this over the Louvre. The Orsay collection is housed in an old train station – the interior is really stunning. The original station clock dominates one end of the room – Jenni drew a sketch of it (Security was very tight about taking photos).

The hallways containing Impressionism period pieces by the likes of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renior, Degas, Rodin, Monet and Manet were packed with people, which made it difficult to appreciate the art. I now have a new reason to become a millionaire – to afford private guided tour of museums.

Day 8 We must be either brave or crazy as we head for the Palace of Versailles at about 10am, after grave warnings the from our guidebook regarding exceptionally long lines. The secret of getting tickets in the train station is apparently no longer possible, so we join the line at the gift shop around the corner from the palace. After an hour of waiting, and facing another hour to enter the palace, we splurge and purchase a guided tour which gets us past further lines.

Walking through the palace’s royal rooms is very similar to strolling through the vatican: you are like cattle herded through the most expensive barn ever created. Every square inch of the walls seem to be covered by paintings or ornately carved. Below is an example.

The guide did a good job of providing an overview of each room, and of the previous occupants, whose total lack of any modesty was part of the justification for the french revolution. After about an hour of this, we escape to the gardens and picnic by the Swiss lake. We can hear people shooting somewhere off in the woods, and we take time to nap before strolling through the immense gardens, maintained with Disneyland like precision.