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| Eiffel Tower |
Paris: An Overview
A long time desire is satisfied. I am now in Paris, the city
of lights and romantic dreams. The only thing missing is a romantic man. Sigh.
However, I am with my good friend Joyce and we are having a
wonderful time.
We purchased a two day On-Off pass for the L’Open Tour bus
system. I have no desire to see a place through the windows of a tour bus and
be told all about it from some guide who asks for tips later in the day. But
the double decker bus tours, that appear to be widespread in big cities around
the world, are more of an overview of a city, and I’ve enjoyed them in
Washington DC, and Edinburgh Scotland. The information about what you’re seeing
comes over a loudspeaker or through ear buds. It’s a great way to orient the
layout of a city with respect to a river, mountain range, or some big castle on
a hill.
We used the bus on Sunday, the first bright sunny warm day.
Our pass included the river boats that run up and down the Seine. It was a
great day to see the whole city, even some of the modern parts that most
tourists never get far enough out to see.
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| Notre Dame Cathedral |
My only complaint is that the bus speakers weren’t great and
there were times, like parked directly in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral, that
the canned tour never even mentioned the world famous site!! Music played most
of the time between commentary, and it ranged from traditional French songs,
opera, and jazz to country-western tunes sung in French of course. Couldn’t
help but remind me there is a city called Paris, in Texas!
Hopping off the boat, we visited the Eiffel Tower. Neither
of us wanted to stand in the extremely long line to ride the elevator to the
top, but it was fun to hang around, eat an ice cream, and take pictures looking
up into the open iron framework.
It was built for the 1900 Universal Exposition and was
supposed to be torn down afterwards. Many Parisians felt it ruined the skyline,
but its supporters won out. Another pavilion that should have disappeared is
the Grand Palais and the Petite Palais, across the street. Both of these
beautiful buildings are also now icons along the Seine and the Champs-Elysees
Returning to the center of Paris we went inside the
Cathedral. What a feat of Gothic architectural engineering it is. It was one of
the first buildings to use the flying buttress, which allowed the walls to hold
a towering ceiling above worshipers without collapsing upon them.
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| View from MontMartre |
The next day we rode the bus again, this time on the other
routes so as to get a feel for just how large Paris really is. South of the
Seine is the Luxemborg palace and gardens, the Musee d’Orsay with its huge
collection of Impressionist paintings, and the Rodin Museum. North is MonteMartre,
the cathedral on a hill. It was an old stone building, but of much more recent
construction, not requiring flying buttresses. If it hadn’t been raining a cold
and steady drizzle, we might have also enjoyed its extensive gardens. Getting
to it was a trip in itself, as the area just below is the sex district with the
Molin Rouge and sex toy shops lining the boulevard. We walked back, after the
drizzle stopped, to the nearest metro through a neighborhood full of material
and sewing shops. Dozens of stores lined the street with every kind of material
imaginable.
The bus/boat tour had been a great way to spend a couple of
days, one bright and sunny, the other a bit wet. We felt we’d simply “flown”
over Paris like a bird with someone pointing out the sights as we swooped
around. The next day we dug into Paris deeply, like moles looking for
sustenance.
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| Arc de Triomphe |
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| View of a canal from the Bastille |
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| Tower of St Jaques, where pilgrims began their journey on the Camino de Santiago |
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