The France Blogs: Day 1

Day 1: Traveley … and then Paris

Amazing that, by plane, it takes about an hour to get from Bristol to Paris … yet our day started at about 10 a.m. and we got to our hotel room at about 8 p.m. Buses and trains, buses and trains. CDG was amazingly simple, if a lot of walking (in the U.S. an airport that size would definitely have shuttles or tramways, in France though, you walk). We figured out how to get the train from the airport to the hotel, and how to use the slight confusing machines to buy tickets, and were on our way through the suburbs into the center of the city.

Side-note: It is surprising how often language isn’t the issue with machines. Everybody has a different icon system, computer screens and menu logic aren’t always apparent. So a machine to buy train tickets in Swansea looks nothing like one in Paris, or in Toulouse (that one was the weirdest of all) and you have to suss out what kind of graphic-logic the manufacturer and programmer were using. There is something incredibly frustrating about this confrontation with something which feels as if it should be elementary and obvious … it turns me into a lost 8 year old. It’s the same with Post Offices … amazing how stumped I can be by mailbox color and shape (Where the hell do I put my letter!) or the layout of a grocery store (Why would you put the hummus here?).

We emerged, blinking, into a bright, cloudless, warm Paris evening at the Luxembourg Metro on busy Boulevard St. Michel and oriented ourselves using the iron gates of the park. Hotel Stella, our home in Paris, is on Rue Monsieur Le Prince, about the center of the triangle if you used Blvd. St. Michel and Blvd. St. Germain, and then a line formed by the edge Luxembourg Garden to join the two. Which really meant nothing to me until we had spent some time wandering and I realized just how amazing the location is … which will become apparent I imagine, in later posts.

Rue Monsieur Le Prince is a street of Japanese Restaurants, bookshops, and apartments, with a Cave (Wine bar) right next door to us that meant we got the echoes of tinkling glasses, popping corks, and French (and English and German and Chinese and …) chatter late into the night through our windows. As well as plenty of rumbling Moto-velos, and delivery vans.



We were a little unsure at first, but it turned out to be a wonderful place in a 17th century building with a ridiculously steep staircase, exposed wood beams, and large room (we had TWO windows) … (large is relative here, in Paris a double room might be a bed with enough space to squeeze by along the walls, we had a double bed, a single bed, a desk, a cupboard, a bathroom with shower!) It’s a no-frills place with awful wallpaper, mismatched sheets, and green-painted furniture with ripping seams, and noisy plumbing, but in the end makes you feel like you’re staying with your great aunt. Through our windows we could see down the street, houses opposite, someone’s inner courtyard, and watch the spotlight of the Eiffel Tower rake across the sky.



We headed out immediately for food, found the narrow, crazy-busy street down near St. Michel with Moaz Falafel, and took our salads to Notre Dame to eat. The garden next to it was closed, so we sat in the Place in front, then walked along the Seine as the sun began to set. The world was loud, bustling, charged with energy. I think it may have been one of the first warm summery evenings of the year because the Seine was thronged with people eating, talking, drinking wine and champagne. We made a slow circuit along the river, crossed the Pont de le Archeveche at the end of the Ile de le Cite over to the Ile St. Louis to the Right Bank and around, back to the Left Bank along Pont Neuf, with its strange faces carved into the ride of the bridge.

We only got lost the one time when we tried to find our way back through the twisting streets back to the hotel. I didn’t think we’d be able to fall asleep with all the city and street noise coming in through the window … but was soon fast asleep.



In a way I’ve only given a route, without detail …. But it’s hard to describe because the first night was so perplexing. I really couldn’t believe the simple fact of the streets and buildings. The stunning fact of dome after dome, spire after spire punctuating the skyline, of the elegant stone buildings, ranging from a couple hundred to a thousand years old …. When the sunset turned to a saturated, deep wine-red beyond the bridges of the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame, with the swirling voices, and smell of wine and piss and dust in the air – I wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t dreaming.

When we had rounded the islands and were making our way back to the hotel it was late, past 11, quite dark. We stopped a moment along the river, looking down on an orangey streetlamp which illuminated a perfect spider’s web attached to the curve of the lamppost. The enormous brown and yellow spider was busy repairing damages as the moths flew recklessly close to his web. In the breeze off the river, all the spider seemed to catch were the fine white feathers of pigeons and seagulls. I lifted a hand and my jacket cuff caught the light, glowing a faint crescent—which attracted a moth, who brushed against my cheek.



Ah … Paris.