Paris
Paris
Accommodation
My final task in Bruges was to arrange accommodation for Paris. Having left this to the morning of departure the budget options were slim. It was a straight choice between some down-at-heel "hotels" or the Peace & Love Hostel. Peace & Love is described in my guide book as a "modern day hippy hangout" which is "rather chaotically run." The Hostel's own blurb on hostelworld.com reads "Peace & Love is a hostel you'll want to stay at, if you are the kind of person who wants to party, drink and be merry!! DO NOT COME HERE IF YOU ARE A SLEEPER!!" Its fair to say that i enjoy a jar and a few tunes, but i am also somewhat fond of my sleep. In view of the alternatives i booked in for three nites.
On arrival at Peace & Love i was informed they had no bed for the first nite, but could offer a mattress on the floor and a bed for the following two nites. As my options were slimmer than a model in a vomitarium i accepted. My mattress was partly tucked under a double bunk in a small room. My room-mates were an Aussie girl and a Canuck. The Canuck had got the same spiel re overbooking the previous evening and had just been promoted from mattress to bed. Coincidentally, when i was promoted to bed the following day, a Costa Rican fellow was told that they had in error overbooked that nite and would he be happy on the mattress?!
Peace & Love Bar
The first evening i headed to the Eiffel Tower, L'Arc De Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees. Circa 10:15 i headed to the Peace & Love bar for a nitecap. Happily for a destitute backpacker, it was Happy Hour. Sitting at the counter i fell into conversation with a fellow in a leather jacket and jeans - clearly not backpacker. He was an American living in Paris and the Peace & Love apparently has the best Happy Hour in town. Le American worked in website design and did some lecturing. However his true interest was "free energy". An intriguing prospect, so i quizzed him a little. Apparently, if you place one magnet inside a larger one it will spin continuously, propelled by the electromagnetic fields. The small magnet can act as a sort of turbine and generate "free energy". Le American is not powering his house on this basis nor has he developed a prototype but is certain that "free energy" is the next big thing. It seemed a little wacky but he was enthusiastic and engaging. We moved on briefly to my travel plans, which he informed me were pointless - as neither the Middle East nor Iran will be there six months from now. World War III will have kicked off long before then, its advent brought closer by the Republicans losing the elections the nite before. Okey-dokey then. Time to move the conversation on a little i thought.
A passing reference to 9/11 led to Le American asking if i believed all that "horsehit". Quelle manure du cheval is this i wondered. That "19 Arabs" could organise all of that? No, no, no my friends. Never happened. Stay with me here. The Twin Towers fell to the ground in 8 point something seconds. This apparently would contravene the law of gravity. Unless. Unless there was a bomb on the fifty-sixth storey of each building. Did you know that George Bush's brother - not Jeb mind, but another one - was in charge of security at the Twin Towers on 9/11. Yep. And Dick Cheney ordered the US Air Force to stand down over NY and Washington the day before the attack. The Pentagon? No plane. There never was. It was a bomb. And so it continued engagingly and interestingly ever deeper into the world of conspiracy, paranoia and the Bilderberg Group.
The Peace & Love bar closes at 2:00am each evening - so it says in the Guide Book, on the website and on the sign behind the bar. Circa 2:15 i was nursing the end of a pint, chatting to the barmaid who had made a feeble - by Irish standards - suggestion that i finish up and clear off. Then the fuzz pulled up outside. "Quick, you, into the kitchen." In time honoured tradition i grabbed my pint and pegged it down stairs where one or two others were in late nite chat mode. A very unamused barmaid emerged from upstairs shortly after. Les gendarmes were unimpressed. Particularly unimpressed with the one who they had seen grabbing his drink and pegging it. This time i was ordered to rooms in a more robust fashion. Fair enuff.
Modern Art
The following morning i headed to the Pompidou Centre of Modern Art. I can never quite settle my attitude to modern art. Just as i begin to find it interesting, interactive and thought provoking i come across a load of tosh that puts my line of thought into reverse. Mostly so it went at the Pompidou Centre. Having strolled around the exhibits for a couple of hours i returned to one near the entrance. It is an installation designed to allow you observe the other visitors as they view the exhibits. It is comprised of a number of strategically placed, rudimentary couches. You are invited to sit and watch. I was nursing a slightly sore head - asking for "whatever is the cheapest thing you have on tap" the nite before probably contributed - and was feeling quite tired after my exertions. So i went to the couch at the rear and lay down for a moment. And passed out. Two hours later i awoke, refreshed and ready for a spot of late lunch. And so i made my first profound contribution to the arts. With modern art everyone can have a go.
Food
On day three i visited Versailles. All very lavish and beautiful. Afterwards i decided to budget-bust and get some reasonably decent grub and vino. My most used implement so far has been my spork. That's a red, plastic implement with a spoon at one end and a fork at the other. The fork end has a serrated edge for cutting. It is fantastic for anything that costs less than a couple of euro and which can be eaten on a park bench - yoghurt, kiwis etc. But now for a restaurant. Le Chartier has been in business since 1905. It specialises in collective seating and mismatched furniture. The Maitre D's would not look out of place doing door at Buskers - shaven heads, beefy and dark suits. I ended up sitting opposite a Japanese gent from Nagoya and next to two Parisian dames in their sixties. The waiter was satisfyingly surly. Apparently the flash fried steak is a house speciality. It must really be flash-fried as Surly delivered it less than 120 seconds later. The atmosphere was rare and price was low. The two Parisian dames were friends who met there once every couple of months. They had very little English and no Gaelige. But we mustered an amusing conversation. They proposed that French girls were n0t really that attractive and that American girls are much better looking. I was appalled and rallied to the flag of French femaledom. We managed eventually to overcome our linguistic differences and arrive at a point of agreement - Swedish birds are stunning.
Hostel Bar - Take 2
On return to Peace & Love, a lovely warm half-bottle of Bordeaux inside, i found the Canuck, la Aussie and Msr Costa Rican in situ. La Aussie proposed a jar and we headed to the bar. We fell into conversation with some Latvians and a game of Jenga broke out. I decided to the leave the field and headed to the bar where i met a Latvian-American, former pro ice-hockey player. He was cycling from Madrid to Riga, camping in fields along the way. The first the farmers knew of his stay was on discovery of a flattened square of grass in the morning - no word on the Europe-wide surge in crop circles (or squares). The nite before he had slept on a bench by the canal as there was no where else - within budget - to be had. An interesting fellow. There was a different barmaid on duty - she was from Pennsylvania. We chatted until 1:20 when she set about clearing the bar. I thought she taking the Michael but became apparent she was intent on having us out by 1:30. So i pointed to the sign that said 2:00am and to the guide book and appealed for reason. New rules. Apparently some Irish guy got caught on premises after hours by les gendarmes a few nites before and the owners of Peace & Love had decreed that in future everyone should be out by 1:30. I scuttled off quietly to my room.
Accomodation - Take 2
I had only booked the Peace & Love for three nites and they had no further availability at short notice - not even on the ever popular emergency mattress. One English lad had slept on the kitchen floor the nite before. Mercifully i was not offered the kitchen floor. So i ended up moving to the rather joyless Hotel San Sebastian. On arrival i went to drop my bag in the room before heading off to see more sights. The room was one which in most hotels would host a single bed. There were four beds crammed together - literally together - in this space. Only one bed seemed to be occupied. On the locker alongside was a half-full can of Kronenberg, a brimming over ashtray and an empty packet of Marlboro. Auspicious totems i figured. I ended up sharing the room with an Indonesian girl, a bloke from El Salvador and an Aussie girl. All proved rather agreeable company and the totems turned out to be the legacy of previous incumbents. Nice! However, clean sheets in Paris for €16 has to be a bargain, albeit a dreary bargain.
Food - Take 2
I spent the penultimate evening in Montmartre. Having seen the Basilica i wandered down through the warren of side streets and wandered into a local brasserie. There were mismatched tables, menus en Francais, old-school jazz music and a dense cloud of blue smoke. I said Bon Soiree to my waitress. She smiled, took it that i spoke French and ran me through the menu at light speed explaining each dish in seemingly intricate detail. Unable to stop her at the outset it seemed inappropriate to inform her half way through that i hadn't a rats what she was saying. So i nodded and proferred "Ah, qui" whenever her intonation suggested a question mark. And at the end i plumped for the Camette du Barbarie. In my mind the word Barbary (ie?) has a number of associations. I understand it has been prefixed to pirates of a certain origin and also that it describes a species of wild ape. Finally, and uncertainly i associate it with duck. So i sipped my vin rouge, settled into the blanket of blue haze and waited to discover if i was to be treated to pirate, ape or duck. Mercifully it was duck and it was fab. That and a demi bouteille of vin rouge for €16. Well outside my daily budget but a bargain nonetheless.
I am partial to the odd (borrowed) cigarette to accompany the odd jar. This foible i intended to relinquish on tour. France is not the place to quit smoking. It seems that everyone here smokes. Each and every restaurant and bar is bathed in a soft, blue fog. Coming from smokingbanland it takes time to adjust. In the restaurants i visited almost every patron chain-smoked up to the moment their green salad was placed under their nose. Having delivered the entree the waiter typically retires to the bar counter and fires up a cig with the other staff. On completion of the green salad further cigarettes will be burned through until arrival of the main course. On one occassion a couple about to sit next to me enquired through the haze whether i minded if they smoked. It seemed pointless to demur.
La Rochelle
I settled on stopping in this coastal town for a nite to break my progression Southward and to get some sea air. Principally i intended to visit Les Tours, three towers that had once protected the harbour from pirate or foreign attack and had close associations with Cardinal Richelieu. On arrival on Sunday evening i discovered that Les Tour were closed on Monday. Which is in keeping with the rest of my French experience: a torturous metro journey in Paris had led me to the closed Catacombs on Saturday. A couple of days later i arrived on a Tuesday at the closed Bell-tower in Bordeaux. The 35-hour working week has gone nuts. The rest of La Rochelle is pretty but - outside of the summer season - dull. Which is dangerously close to being pretty dull. The signal memory i will retain is the response of a French barman in an Irish bar when i enquired if he knew the result of the Liverpool - Arse game earlier in the day. "Le Arsenal gagner. Em... em ... how you say ... em... trois zero?" You said it all dude. Whiskey please.
On so its on to Bordeaux and Limousin .....
Accommodation
My final task in Bruges was to arrange accommodation for Paris. Having left this to the morning of departure the budget options were slim. It was a straight choice between some down-at-heel "hotels" or the Peace & Love Hostel. Peace & Love is described in my guide book as a "modern day hippy hangout" which is "rather chaotically run." The Hostel's own blurb on hostelworld.com reads "Peace & Love is a hostel you'll want to stay at, if you are the kind of person who wants to party, drink and be merry!! DO NOT COME HERE IF YOU ARE A SLEEPER!!" Its fair to say that i enjoy a jar and a few tunes, but i am also somewhat fond of my sleep. In view of the alternatives i booked in for three nites.
On arrival at Peace & Love i was informed they had no bed for the first nite, but could offer a mattress on the floor and a bed for the following two nites. As my options were slimmer than a model in a vomitarium i accepted. My mattress was partly tucked under a double bunk in a small room. My room-mates were an Aussie girl and a Canuck. The Canuck had got the same spiel re overbooking the previous evening and had just been promoted from mattress to bed. Coincidentally, when i was promoted to bed the following day, a Costa Rican fellow was told that they had in error overbooked that nite and would he be happy on the mattress?!
Peace & Love Bar
The first evening i headed to the Eiffel Tower, L'Arc De Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees. Circa 10:15 i headed to the Peace & Love bar for a nitecap. Happily for a destitute backpacker, it was Happy Hour. Sitting at the counter i fell into conversation with a fellow in a leather jacket and jeans - clearly not backpacker. He was an American living in Paris and the Peace & Love apparently has the best Happy Hour in town. Le American worked in website design and did some lecturing. However his true interest was "free energy". An intriguing prospect, so i quizzed him a little. Apparently, if you place one magnet inside a larger one it will spin continuously, propelled by the electromagnetic fields. The small magnet can act as a sort of turbine and generate "free energy". Le American is not powering his house on this basis nor has he developed a prototype but is certain that "free energy" is the next big thing. It seemed a little wacky but he was enthusiastic and engaging. We moved on briefly to my travel plans, which he informed me were pointless - as neither the Middle East nor Iran will be there six months from now. World War III will have kicked off long before then, its advent brought closer by the Republicans losing the elections the nite before. Okey-dokey then. Time to move the conversation on a little i thought.
A passing reference to 9/11 led to Le American asking if i believed all that "horsehit". Quelle manure du cheval is this i wondered. That "19 Arabs" could organise all of that? No, no, no my friends. Never happened. Stay with me here. The Twin Towers fell to the ground in 8 point something seconds. This apparently would contravene the law of gravity. Unless. Unless there was a bomb on the fifty-sixth storey of each building. Did you know that George Bush's brother - not Jeb mind, but another one - was in charge of security at the Twin Towers on 9/11. Yep. And Dick Cheney ordered the US Air Force to stand down over NY and Washington the day before the attack. The Pentagon? No plane. There never was. It was a bomb. And so it continued engagingly and interestingly ever deeper into the world of conspiracy, paranoia and the Bilderberg Group.
The Peace & Love bar closes at 2:00am each evening - so it says in the Guide Book, on the website and on the sign behind the bar. Circa 2:15 i was nursing the end of a pint, chatting to the barmaid who had made a feeble - by Irish standards - suggestion that i finish up and clear off. Then the fuzz pulled up outside. "Quick, you, into the kitchen." In time honoured tradition i grabbed my pint and pegged it down stairs where one or two others were in late nite chat mode. A very unamused barmaid emerged from upstairs shortly after. Les gendarmes were unimpressed. Particularly unimpressed with the one who they had seen grabbing his drink and pegging it. This time i was ordered to rooms in a more robust fashion. Fair enuff.
Modern Art
The following morning i headed to the Pompidou Centre of Modern Art. I can never quite settle my attitude to modern art. Just as i begin to find it interesting, interactive and thought provoking i come across a load of tosh that puts my line of thought into reverse. Mostly so it went at the Pompidou Centre. Having strolled around the exhibits for a couple of hours i returned to one near the entrance. It is an installation designed to allow you observe the other visitors as they view the exhibits. It is comprised of a number of strategically placed, rudimentary couches. You are invited to sit and watch. I was nursing a slightly sore head - asking for "whatever is the cheapest thing you have on tap" the nite before probably contributed - and was feeling quite tired after my exertions. So i went to the couch at the rear and lay down for a moment. And passed out. Two hours later i awoke, refreshed and ready for a spot of late lunch. And so i made my first profound contribution to the arts. With modern art everyone can have a go.
Food
On day three i visited Versailles. All very lavish and beautiful. Afterwards i decided to budget-bust and get some reasonably decent grub and vino. My most used implement so far has been my spork. That's a red, plastic implement with a spoon at one end and a fork at the other. The fork end has a serrated edge for cutting. It is fantastic for anything that costs less than a couple of euro and which can be eaten on a park bench - yoghurt, kiwis etc. But now for a restaurant. Le Chartier has been in business since 1905. It specialises in collective seating and mismatched furniture. The Maitre D's would not look out of place doing door at Buskers - shaven heads, beefy and dark suits. I ended up sitting opposite a Japanese gent from Nagoya and next to two Parisian dames in their sixties. The waiter was satisfyingly surly. Apparently the flash fried steak is a house speciality. It must really be flash-fried as Surly delivered it less than 120 seconds later. The atmosphere was rare and price was low. The two Parisian dames were friends who met there once every couple of months. They had very little English and no Gaelige. But we mustered an amusing conversation. They proposed that French girls were n0t really that attractive and that American girls are much better looking. I was appalled and rallied to the flag of French femaledom. We managed eventually to overcome our linguistic differences and arrive at a point of agreement - Swedish birds are stunning.
Hostel Bar - Take 2
On return to Peace & Love, a lovely warm half-bottle of Bordeaux inside, i found the Canuck, la Aussie and Msr Costa Rican in situ. La Aussie proposed a jar and we headed to the bar. We fell into conversation with some Latvians and a game of Jenga broke out. I decided to the leave the field and headed to the bar where i met a Latvian-American, former pro ice-hockey player. He was cycling from Madrid to Riga, camping in fields along the way. The first the farmers knew of his stay was on discovery of a flattened square of grass in the morning - no word on the Europe-wide surge in crop circles (or squares). The nite before he had slept on a bench by the canal as there was no where else - within budget - to be had. An interesting fellow. There was a different barmaid on duty - she was from Pennsylvania. We chatted until 1:20 when she set about clearing the bar. I thought she taking the Michael but became apparent she was intent on having us out by 1:30. So i pointed to the sign that said 2:00am and to the guide book and appealed for reason. New rules. Apparently some Irish guy got caught on premises after hours by les gendarmes a few nites before and the owners of Peace & Love had decreed that in future everyone should be out by 1:30. I scuttled off quietly to my room.
Accomodation - Take 2
I had only booked the Peace & Love for three nites and they had no further availability at short notice - not even on the ever popular emergency mattress. One English lad had slept on the kitchen floor the nite before. Mercifully i was not offered the kitchen floor. So i ended up moving to the rather joyless Hotel San Sebastian. On arrival i went to drop my bag in the room before heading off to see more sights. The room was one which in most hotels would host a single bed. There were four beds crammed together - literally together - in this space. Only one bed seemed to be occupied. On the locker alongside was a half-full can of Kronenberg, a brimming over ashtray and an empty packet of Marlboro. Auspicious totems i figured. I ended up sharing the room with an Indonesian girl, a bloke from El Salvador and an Aussie girl. All proved rather agreeable company and the totems turned out to be the legacy of previous incumbents. Nice! However, clean sheets in Paris for €16 has to be a bargain, albeit a dreary bargain.
Food - Take 2
I spent the penultimate evening in Montmartre. Having seen the Basilica i wandered down through the warren of side streets and wandered into a local brasserie. There were mismatched tables, menus en Francais, old-school jazz music and a dense cloud of blue smoke. I said Bon Soiree to my waitress. She smiled, took it that i spoke French and ran me through the menu at light speed explaining each dish in seemingly intricate detail. Unable to stop her at the outset it seemed inappropriate to inform her half way through that i hadn't a rats what she was saying. So i nodded and proferred "Ah, qui" whenever her intonation suggested a question mark. And at the end i plumped for the Camette du Barbarie. In my mind the word Barbary (ie?) has a number of associations. I understand it has been prefixed to pirates of a certain origin and also that it describes a species of wild ape. Finally, and uncertainly i associate it with duck. So i sipped my vin rouge, settled into the blanket of blue haze and waited to discover if i was to be treated to pirate, ape or duck. Mercifully it was duck and it was fab. That and a demi bouteille of vin rouge for €16. Well outside my daily budget but a bargain nonetheless.
I am partial to the odd (borrowed) cigarette to accompany the odd jar. This foible i intended to relinquish on tour. France is not the place to quit smoking. It seems that everyone here smokes. Each and every restaurant and bar is bathed in a soft, blue fog. Coming from smokingbanland it takes time to adjust. In the restaurants i visited almost every patron chain-smoked up to the moment their green salad was placed under their nose. Having delivered the entree the waiter typically retires to the bar counter and fires up a cig with the other staff. On completion of the green salad further cigarettes will be burned through until arrival of the main course. On one occassion a couple about to sit next to me enquired through the haze whether i minded if they smoked. It seemed pointless to demur.
La Rochelle
I settled on stopping in this coastal town for a nite to break my progression Southward and to get some sea air. Principally i intended to visit Les Tours, three towers that had once protected the harbour from pirate or foreign attack and had close associations with Cardinal Richelieu. On arrival on Sunday evening i discovered that Les Tour were closed on Monday. Which is in keeping with the rest of my French experience: a torturous metro journey in Paris had led me to the closed Catacombs on Saturday. A couple of days later i arrived on a Tuesday at the closed Bell-tower in Bordeaux. The 35-hour working week has gone nuts. The rest of La Rochelle is pretty but - outside of the summer season - dull. Which is dangerously close to being pretty dull. The signal memory i will retain is the response of a French barman in an Irish bar when i enquired if he knew the result of the Liverpool - Arse game earlier in the day. "Le Arsenal gagner. Em... em ... how you say ... em... trois zero?" You said it all dude. Whiskey please.
On so its on to Bordeaux and Limousin .....
Labels: Paris
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