"La France!" - Part 2

Week one complete, on to week two. We left Montpellier on the 9am train to Paris. One more thing that should have gone off without a hitch yet ended with me being "lucky" to be on the train. Once we got on the train we had to try and find two seats near each other. Even though I bought two seats next to each other that is apparently no guarantee of actually getting it. So we wandered around and eventually Joy would narc on a guy with no ticket to get him booted leaving his smelly seat vacant and calling my name.

We arrived in Paris and hopped in a cab for destinations unknown. I told the cab driver the name of the hotel and the approximate street location and he had no idea where to take us so he dropped us off near where I told him. After foolishly asking a crepe vendor for directions we phoned the hotel and asked how to get there. Surprisingly this was not that helpful. We took cover from one of the afternoon deluges and a short time later arrived at the hotel. Now let me just say that all is not what it seems on Expedia.com. I've stayed in nice hotels. I stayed in a really great room at the Waldorf in NYC and so I foolishly thought that if I spend an equivalent amount of money for a hotel in Paris I ought to get roughly the same accommodations; at the very least the same service. Not the case in fact. A lady showed us to our room and to the shock and dismay of all of us the room was adorned with a painting over the bed that I would guess at having been painted in the "I'm selling this out of my van down by the river" style. Even the lady that worked there smiled, chuckled and said " 'zis is 'ze first time I have seen 'zis " and called down to have us put in another room. I don't know what is happening with hotels these days but all of the charm is gone from the rooms. If you want to have a room with anything not corporate looking you have to get a suite. This was a four star hotel, with Capote and Hemingway listed in the guestbook. What in the hell? The location was good, no doubt about it. But even the service was lack luster. When we informed the hotel restaurant that we would be taking cocktails and dessert in our room they informed us that we most certainly would not be. So we ordered drinks and waited in the bar. The drink price is directly proportional to the serve time. If your drink costs 20 Euros, it will take twenty minutes to arrive. In our case we ordered two drinks which meant we were to wait 40 minutes for their arrival. We waited. Drank our underwhelming drinks and went to bed.

It rained a lot. When it wasn't raining it was cloudy and not very warm. We had one nice day all week and it was sunny and 72. Thank god I packed sweaters. I thought for sure I was wasting my time with them when I packed them. We walked all over town, hitting the a lot of the more famous landmarks. The Louvre:

Joy and I are suckers for sculpture. We wanted to get to the Rodin sculpture garden as well but with all the rain we decided not to go. The Louvre is quite lovely though. It would be nice to be able to experience it without all of the crowds. We also saw the Arc de Triumphe:

Invalides:

Notre Dame:

Montmartre:

The Eiffel Tower:

We saw a lot of other noteworthy lovely things as we walked around the city but I don't have photos of those to show you. I've been to Paris several times before and each time I go I see something I hadn't seen before. Sometimes it's a cool fountain:

Sometimes it is something that you don't even know the name of:

The most amazing thing that I saw on this trip is Sainte Chapelle. A small chapel built by the monarchy to house religious relics. There aren't any relics left but the stained glass windows that make up the walls are breath taking. We didn't get the full effect because it was over cast the day that we went. Even still, very cool. pics:

We spent a lot of time walking around drinking hot chocolate or Kir Violette or coffee or beer. You had to dodge the rain, you see, and what better way to do that than to sit at a cafe and have a beverage and talk like a hillbilly. I don't have the videos of that but Joy does and they are pretty funny in our opinion.

It was a fantastic trip. Certain things put a damper on it at times most notably the loss of my luggage. Oh well. I really enjoy spending time with Joy and I was really happy to finally meet Philippe. If I had the chance I would have changed the weather in Paris. It was Joy's B-day present after all and I would have liked it to have been less soggy. If I get a chance I will try and scan the film that I took so that you can see some of those. It's more of the same as what you see above.

Thank you so much for all your hospitality. I'll send grocery money to make up for my having eaten all of your food. I hope to see you again very soon.

Music: "Little Acorns" - The White Stripes