Paris by Night

Saturday 29 May 1999. Our day comes to an end after a somewhat exhausting day both in 1999 and several exhausting days in 2023 writing these articles!

The coach took us on a tour of Paris by night, although by this time it was not yet dark and as the drivers had to be up early to take us to Versailles on the following morning, most of the tour would be taken during twilight until the last stop which was a sight to remember. But there's other things to see first, including this - the Arc de Triomph. Now if anyone considers themselves to be a good driver, the place to test that must surely be the Place Charles-de-Gaulle at the top of the Champs-Elysée, where the Arc de Triomphe sits on an island amidst a maelstrom of whirling traffic and blaring horns. This is a roundabout with twelve(!) roads leading to it and where right of way belongs to those joining the roundabout, not leaving it! We were to go into the monument, but a scribbled notice informed us that the monument was "on strike"... We are looking at one of the side arches - the main archway is above us and behind us another arch like this. On the inside face, on the left, are the names of all Napolean's generals.

Through the massive arch someone flew a biplane in 1919, not the type of deed that the city would like to encourage and, apart from the obvious safety considerations, here is the reason why. Underneath the arch lies the French grave of the Unknown Soldier, laid here after the Great War in 1920. An eternal flame was lit in 1923 and is ceremoniously rekindled every night. In 1962 someone was arrested for frying eggs over it. Imagine if someone did that over our equivalent in Westminster Abbey... When we were there, gun-carrying sentries were posted on either side of the grave.

Although it was starting to go dark, the floodlights had not yet lit which was a shame. The lights are automatically controlled by a sensor that measures how dark it is. They came on just as the coach pulled away...

Before I got on the coach, I took this photo of the Champs-Elysée from the monument. The boulevard is lined with trees and many of the buildings have roof gardens. I must have caught a quiet moment in the traffic here as normally you would not have seen the street at all for the merry-go-round of Renaults, Citroens and Peugots!

By the time we arrived at the Eiffel Tower it had gone fully dark, affording a wonderful view of the tower from the terraces of the Palais de Chaillot. When first built the tower was the highest building in the world - only made practical by the invention of the lift ("elevator" for my American readers). 10,000 tons of iron were used and, because of expansion, the tower can grow by as much as 6 inches on a hot day! On the front of the tower, the display shows the number of days left to the new Millenium.

The terraces of the Palais de Chaillot were full of souvenir stalls, trinkets and baubles laid out for sale on rugs, hawkers demonstrating toy aeroplanes and stalls selling food and drink. The place was crowded and I had to pick my moment to get to the front of the terrace wall to be able to see the ponds and fountains below.

Back on the coach, we set off back towards Bougival and our hotel. Duh - there's that song again... Ain't no doubt we are here to party, (Boogie nights) Come on now got to get it started. Dance with the boogie get down. Cos boogie nights are always the best in town - As we made our way through the streets, the pavement cafes were still doing a brisk trade.

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Sur Les Pieds (On Foot)

Saturday 29 May 1999. Penultimate round-up of the day as we find ourselves out of the coach with a couple of hours to ourselves. We've already used a good chunk of it in a shop... So let's crack on.

We left the Galeries Lafayette and promptly got lost by coming out onto a different street than we had entered from! Well, not exactly lost, because all we had to do was circle the building, but a bit more of our precious two hours away from the coach tour was being eaten up. We found our way back to L'Opéra and made our way down the boulevards back towards the Louvre, which had been in silhouette when we were there in the morning.

Cafe de la Paix. We thought we had better wait until we were coming back to see if we had time left to lounge at a table with a glass, so we carried on walking. It took longer than expected to get to the Louvre and by then Fran's foot was sore. She thought her shoe had been rubbing but then found when she took it off that her sandal had left patterns of sunburn on her foot and the straps had been rubbing against that. She had seen a Scholl shop somewhere from the coach and has always liked their shoes but we hadn't been able to find the shop.

So we didn't exactly stay a long time at the Louvre. Just about long enough to take a quick photo and then we thought we had better head back, not knowing if Fran's foot would get worse and slow her down. We didn't want to miss the coach!

We passed this teddy bear, busily blowing bubbles, then Miss Franny saw the shop she had been looking for and dragged me in. Would my French be up to this I wondered... Fran found some shoes and I managed to ask if they had them in her size (which luckily she knew, continental sizes being nothing like our modest numbers).

So I ordered what to me sounded like a pair of clown-sized shoes and was told "Assayez la," which I knew meant either "wait" or "sit" over there so we waited for a bit then - oh no! She came back with a different pair! But my thanks to the lady on the ice cream van for reminding me of the word for "same"!

I probably mixed up my verbs a bit but, "Ces n'est pas la meme," elicited another look at them from the sales assistant, who drew a breath and tutted at her own mistake and she tootled off and brought back the pair Fran wanted. Phew! Success!

I felt ridiculously proud of myself, Fran acted as though it was nothing at all and she knew I would cope (huh???) and she changed into them straight away and by the time we were back at the hotel preparing for our evening out for a meal and night-time coach excursion she declared herself fit for a marathon.

Refreshed and changed, we got back on the coach and headed back into Paris for our meal, where we sat next to the resident musician. Now regular visitors to my site will know I play the odd instrument myself... So I know that playing to a totally unresponsive audience can be soul destroying and I made a point of applauding after every tune. Which was obviously appreciated and although he didn't speak English, I knew enough to get talking to him and we got on famously. I declined his offer to turn round and play the piano that was behind me as, although I play keyboards, if my left hand gets a rhythm going on piano, my right hand seems to want to play at windscreen wipers...

He played both clarinet and saxophone and was very good on both. I asked him how long he had played and he told me he had played since being a young boy. After the meal we parted with smiles and I even got the traditional French embrace and then a rather merry group weaved its way back to the coach to find Lucy and Elizabeth, two young girls on the trip who had not come for the meal, sitting waiting and tapping their watches at me with a huge grin on their faces - they had been 5 minutes late back onto the coach that morning and had a few comments from Les Miserables on the coach!

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Galeries Lafayette

Saturday 29 May 1999. We have been zooming around Paris all morning on and off the coach and now as the time approaches lunch, we have two hours free time to explore a little bit on our own.

The coach dropped us at L'Opéra and following the advice of our courier, Monsieur Vallaire, Fran and I went into the large department store, Galeries Lafayette and made our way up several floors to the roof, which is accessible to shoppers and visitors.

The climb up - well, alright it was a ride by a series of escalators or moving stairways! - was rewarded by the view you see in these photographs. A rooftop cafe was serving refreshments, but we resisted as I quite fancied a sit at a pavement cafe and had spotted a few famous names on our travels; Fouquet's, Cafe de la Paix to mention but a couple. So far the photos show the standard views, but for several shots I dug my zoom lens out of the camera bag.

You can see from the first photo above that Paris occupies a particularly flat landscape. The only notable exception is the area of Montmarte where the famous cathedral of Sacre Coeur sits. No, you can't see it here - but we will have a look at it tomorrow.

I took a photo of the tower and by swinging just a little, the gold leaf of the dome of Les Invalides caught the sun and made an irresistable beckoning to the camera! It was quite a while before we realised that our 2 hours out of the coach was being eaten up!

However before we left the Galeries Lafayette, there was something else that Vallaire had told us was worth seeing, and that was the dome and cupola of the store.

They had made a feature out of the dome as each of the floors had a balcony, allowing an uninterrupted view upwards from the ground floor of the store. This is not the full story though, as mosaic, moulding and gold come together to create a stunning interior.

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The Eiffel Tower

Saturday 29 May 1999. A smaller page than some of the others, but I felt that the one main symbol of Paris should have a page all to itself! We are having a look at the Eiffel Tower prior to having a bit of time to ourselves to wander around or just sit at a cafe table watching the world go by.

The paintwork was duller than I expected - though why I should have expected a "sparkling" tower I have no idea! But the tower does not disappoint at all, though sadly there was no time to go up to admire the view from the viewing platforms.

The weather was scorching and the roses in the flower beds added a dramatic touch of red to the photo above, though there was no way of having both roses and an uninterrupted view of the tower.

I was by now sporting a baseball cap with 'Paris' emblazoned on it, bought from one of the kiosks along the banks of the River Seine. Otherwise the old bald head would have been glowing enough to confuse drivers at night...

Ok, time for a bit about the tower itself! Twice as high as Blackpool's but without the house of fun at the bottom - 'Nowt to take brass' (Nothing to take money) is how the Blackpool owners thought of the french inspiration for their own tower - it was designed by Gustav Eiffel for the World's Fair of 1889. The structure appalled many Parisians and there were protests against it. But for it being such as success as a platform for a radio antenna it would have been demolished in 1909.

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Kings and Emperors

Saturday 29 May 1999. To get back to our coach after viewing Notre Dame cathedral we have to walk back along the River Seine, cross the river and pass before the scaffolded front doors then back along the river to where the coach is parked.

On the square in front of Notre Dame stands this statue of King Charlemagne (Charles I the Great, King of the Franks from 768 CE, King of the Lombards from 774 CE and Holy Roman Emperor from 800 CE). The Court of Charlemagne was said to hold high the principles of chivalry, as the mythical English Court of King Arthur is reputed to have done. He did like to spread his chivalry around and had a known ten wives or concubines with perhaps a few more unknown ones.

We bought an ice cream from a van, served by a broad French woman who, from the muscles of her arm, could have had a second job juggling oxen at the circus... She only gave me one and I had to reach back into my mind to school French lessons some thirty years previously; "Er... et un autre s'il vous plait," She eyed me for a moment, weighing up how far she could throw me down river then said, "le même?" which my mind surprised me by remembering it meant "the same?" - a phrase that would come in very handy later in this trip. Then we headed on across the bridge towards the place where the coach was due to pick us up. (Notre Dame being on an island, there are bridges to either side to cross the full width of the River Seine.) The ices were delicious and the temperature made them all the more welcome as it was around 30 degrees celcius.

La Place de la Concorde was completed in 1763. It contains statues representing the eight largest towns in France. At one end stands the French Houses of Parliament and in the centre is a 3,300-year-old obelisk from the Temple of Thebes, a gift to Paris from the Viceroy of Egypt in 1829. During the Revolution the guillotine stood on the Place. Louis XVI was executed here in January 1793. As the blade was raised he said calmly; "May my blood bring happiness to France." I'm not sure it did.

The Champs-Elysées with the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. There was nothing but marshland and bog here until 1616 when Marie de Médici built a carriageway. In 1814 the Russian occupying armies pulled down the trees for firewood. In the parks, people heard for the first time the sound of the saxophone, played by its inventor, Monsieur Sax. Of the arch, we shall hear later.

Les Invalides. Built by the war-loving Louis XIV to house retired soldiers in 1676, it was to become the source of the Revolutionaries' weapons for the storming of the Bastille. Napoleon's body lies beneath the dome in six coffins, Russian doll style. He wanted it to be on a low level so that future visitors to his tomb would have to bow their heads to gaze on it. Either that or he expected future archeologists to sit in a circle around it and open a coffin each time the music stopped... Yes, that is real gold on the domed roof.

The Ecole Militaire, or Military School on Place Joffre where, at the start of his career as a naval cadet, the instructors were much less respctful of Napoleon, thinking he may make Lieutenant if lucky.

La Conciergerie, looking for all the world like the medieval prison it was despite much building work to the facade in the 1900s. The 14th century clock tower contains Paris's original first public clock and the tower on the right is called 'Bon Bec', 'The Squealer' due to the numerous torture sessions that went on within it. 2,600 prisoners left La Concierge for the guillotine, including (and this shows how volatile the times were) Marie Antoinette, the Queen, followed some time later by her prosecutor, Danton, who was thoughtfully given the cell next door, and then in turn his accuser, Robespierre. One can only reflect that Robespierre's prosecutor should have legged it fast... Somewhere around 16,500 people overall were sent to the guillotine during the Revolution.

And whilst we ponder that, let's do so over a spot of lunch...

A glass of wine and something I can't remember for starters and mains, but I do remember the delicious crème brûlée that followed it! Mmmmm!

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The Panthéon & Notre Dame

Saturday 29 May 1999. We are in Paris for the weekend on a Leger Coach trip.

Having left the Louvre, we drove into the Students' or Latin Quarter. In the early years of the Parisian educational establishments, Latin was the common language of the students who came from all corners of Europe. The photo shows the Town Hall of the 5th Arrondissement (district) of Paris. The area has long had associations with unrest and revolution. In 1832 the events remembered in Les Miserables, in 1848 and notably in 1968 when the world watched in shock as students built barricades and almost brought down the French Republican government of de Gaulle...

The Panthéon. This repository of famous dead bodies is the result of a rather rash promise of Louis XV in 1744 to build a church should he survive an illness. He did survive, but did not have the funds to fulfill his promise and public lotteries were held to finance the building. It was built on the site of a Dark Ages basilica which housed the remains of saints and kings and was finished just in time for the Revolution... Buried here are Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Louis Braille, the inventor of the reading alphabet for the blind. The sun was on the wrong side of the Panthéon to make for a decent record photograph, but as the coach passed the end of the street I snatched this semi silhouette from the window and have to admit to a certain liking for this shot. Notice also the light shining through the globe of the street lamp.

One of the great sights and monuments of Paris is the Notre Dame cathedral, on an island of the Seine: the Île de la Cité.

The coach dropped us off on the banks of the Seine, where a number of street market stalls were selling souvenirs and paintings.

I'm standing beneath a long row of orange trees, shaped into oblongs.

We walked down the river bank to take photos from the rear of the cathedral as once more the position of the sun meant that the front of the cathedral was in shadow. Like many buildings, Notre Dame is being cleaned for the year 2000. This means that there is a certain amount of scaffolding around the city, but not enough to spoil a visit for any but les seriously miserables...

The roof of Notre Dame includes this group of statues leading down from the central spire. We had no time to go into the cathedral unfortunately. A coach sight-seeing trip does not stop in any one place for long, but gives a good grounding for a follow-up trip. There was a fairly large queue in front of the entrance. We settled for buying a couple of souvenirs and I bought a hat to stop my head from going strawberry!

We were called back to the coach. A shame as an hour with a glass of vin rouge on one of these floating kiosk cafes would have been very pleasant!

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The Louvre Area

Saturday 29 May 1999. We wake in our hotel in Bougival. Every time I hear the name of the town, district or whatever, I immediately start to hear the song Boogie Nights in my head. Darn, there it goes again...

Vallaire got us all onto the coach and we headed for Paris, with him pointing out points of interest along the route into the centre of the city. One of these was the marks on the wall of the tunnel where Princess Diana died just two and a bit years ago - I'm not sure I wanted to see those, but the manner of her death is a part of the city's history now and is destined to be a part of any courier's duties when passing through that tunnel I suppose.

We pulled up in the Louvre for our first stop of the day. The arch is the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, not the more famous Arc de Triomphe, but a smaller arch, built in 1808 by Napoleon to commemorate his Austrian victories. The four horses galloping across the roof are copies of four that Napolean stole from Venice. The originals were restored to their rightful place on St Mark's Basilica after the Battle of Waterloo. I say that loosely, because the Venetians had stolen them in the first place, from Constantinople. Through the arch is Le Jardin des Tuileries, a garden created for Catherine de' Medici. It was here that deckchairs were first invented. Or last invented come to think of it...

The Louvre was originally built as a palace in 1200 by King Philippe-Auguste. It served the purpose of filling a weak spot in the early city walls. It remained in use as a royal palace until Louis XIV, the Sun King, decided to build Versailles, moving his court there in 1672. Louis XVI planned to open the Louvre as a museum but lost his head instead. However, the rebels either thought it a good idea or thought up the same plan for themselves and in time it became the world's most famous museum.

The Louvre contains many priceless works of art and famous paintings including of course Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa. Sadly we were not going into the Louvre today, but apparently the Mona Lisa is much smaller than people expect, being only 77 x 53cm (30 × 21 inches).

The Town Hall. The boulevards are lined with trees and greenery and everywhere you are reminded that, unlike central London, people live not merely work in the heart of Paris.

We were ushered back onto the coach which was parked near the Arch de Triomph du Carousel for a trip around some of the sights of Paris.

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Travel to France

It's Friday 28 May 1999. Ugh! What's this??? 4:30am and we are tumbling out of bed to get down to Blackpool Tower to be picked up by a feeder coach taking us to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais. The majority of the photos on this holiday were taken on a very early digital camera and the quality may be not quite as pristine as I would normally like! We are on a weekend trip with Leger Coach Tours to Paris and the Palace of Versailles.

We got to Blackpool Tower a bit early for the coach and crossed to sit on a bench on the Prom. This at 5:30am! A family came and stood in the lay-by, then a couple and we stayed on the Prom until the bus came and then got on still half asleep after the others had got on. Then we made a few more stops to pick people up and then motored south, stopping for breakfast on the motorway.

As we stood in the queue for breakfast Fran said "I know that woman!" and the couple who had been picked up in Blackpool turned out to be one of Fran's work colleagues and her husband! One of the feeder coaches had missed someone and had had to go back for them, so many of the tours including our own had to wait for them to get back to Dover. Above we see the coach interchange where the coaches line up in order - each tour is numbered - and luggage and passengers transfer from their pick-up coach to their tour coach before the crossing to France.

Miss Franny's not looking too happy here and this is before the ferry had even moved away from the dock! I knew I shouldn't have taken her to see Titanic at the cinema... In the background a P&O ferry, freshly arrived from Calais, prepares to reverse into its docking bay. A couple of floors below us, the trickle of cars and wagons onto the ferry has stopped and preparations are being made to cast off. Miss Franny is probably contemplating whether she wants to eat or do a little reversing herself...

The ramps are lifted and the water churns as the ferry slowly pulls away from the dock, the land, and England. This will be our first visit to mainland Europe and our first to a country that speaks a different language to us. I won't call it a foreign language because this time it will be us that are the foreigners!

We stood along with a few of our fellow passengers at the ship's rail, feeling the hitherto unknown sway of a ship larger than the local boating pond rowing boat and staring at the receding line of Dover cliffs, wondering whether we would make it across the 20 odd miles of mountainous seas, crowded navigation ways or whether we might be struck by the kraken or plucked from the deck by a giant octopus, only to be half drowned then stung by thousands of irate jellyfish... It were proper boring in th'end though...

Even Miss Franny decided it was calm enough to risk eating something and by the time we re-emerged onto the deck, Calais was only a short surf, swim or jet-ski away.

We were herded back onto the coaches - "Shep, come by...". Once off the ferry, our courier for the weekend boarded the coach and introduced himself as Vallaire. Hailing from Belgium, he kept up a steady patter throughout the weekend and ensured that we knew what it was we were looking at. We motored south through France, staring at all the countryside and wondering where they hid the towns...

We still had a spell in the coach before us, and it was to be gone midnight by the time we reached our hotel in Bougival. We stopped for a break at a rest stop and I tried out my French for the first time since school almost! All went well happily and although Miss Franny ended up with a toastie instead of a sandwich I felt good that I had managed to avoid having to call on the staff's knowledge of the English language - which would have undoubtedly been better than my French!

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