An Evening in Paris

At Nike Paris on the Champselese, the 4 winner's maiuous (jerseys) of Le Tour were displayed proudly in the window. I was really tempted to get one, but unsurprisingly they were extremely expensive.

When I stopped for my second crepe (Jambon et Fromage; because it was specifically crepes plural in the plan) I met a very charming young lady from Switzerland. We chatted away in a gazebo near the Eiffel tower for about an hour, and exchanged stories of travel and and a few points of culture. It was very pleasant indeed.

I decided to limit my self to entering just one attraction with an entry fee. I considered Muse' de Louvre, but decided that the restrictions on photography would be too frustrating. At the eiffel tower and Arch de Triomph, I was put off by queues. I opted instead for the River cruise; it seemed fitting to use another slightly off-beat mode of transport on the trip. I departed from the base of the eiffel tower at 20:00, the cruise lasted just under an hour, and I had a great chuckle at the extremely cliched' commentary. I picked a fairly good time, as at the point where we had finished traveling up-river, and turned about to come back the lights of Paris were just beginning to come on.

After the cruise I wandered the area to the north West of the eiffel tower. (If I'm honest I got a little bit lost around this point, but eventually got back to the eiffel tower).

I stopped for a snack, and when I emerged from the restaurant (which I'm sorry to say was a McDonalds, but I was trying to keep things a bit austere) night had properly fallen and I began making my way back along the Sene. Paris is, of course, full of beautiful renascence architecture and by night the grand buildings look more striking if anything. Each structure is enhanced with lighting designed to accentuate it very best aspects. I was quite annoyed with my self for not having brought my tripod (as when I set out I had it in mind to return to the hotel before nightfall), I ended up balancing my camera on my knee, bollards or fencing in an attempt to stabilize it for longer exposures but, I'm sorry to say, with limited success.

In my revere at the sights, I quite lost track of time and, having walked back down the sene beyond the Louvre missed the last Metro train back to my hotel. It was all the more irritating for the fact that I was stood beside the last train as it waited on the platform, but found the signage quite confusing and only realized that was the train I needed as the doors were closing (had I twigged a couple of seconds sooner, I would have been on it). After that train rolled out the board changed to "Service termine'". I wandered around looking for another train but eventually found that there were no more. So my journey on the metro ended up being just an expensive walk along the escalators and travelators of a particularly extensive Metro station.

Having wandered Paris all day, I now had to make my way back to the hotel. I had forgotten to turn my phone to "airplane mode", so it had used all its power by the early evening in a futile attempt to find my home (as opposed to a roaming) mobile network. Consequently I had to navigate my way through Paris, a city with which I have no familiarity, by night using just land-marks and periodically referring to the metro maps which are positioned at the entrances to most of the metro stations.

I managed to find a fairly direct route, but was quite weary by the time I finished. My feet certainly felt that they had had their fill of Paris. I got back to my room and was just about to retire to bed, when the fire alarm went off. This resulted in much wandering around in night clothes trying to figure out what was going on, but it was eventually explained that "Its good to sleep; alarm not good, but its good to sleep.". So ended my "Jour rapose" in Paris.Read more