Home ·· News Room ·· Prints ·· Licensing ·· Gallery ·· About Us ·· Contact Us ·· Articles ·· Services Paris, France trip report, October 13-20, 2003 Updated December 12, 2008 Page 3 of 5 Previous page   Next page
	Paris, France, continued The total tour time for the tower is about 3 hours, and that's without taking the time to check out the museum. We then took off to see Napoleon's tomb. This is across from the Hotel d'Invalides and the Musee d'Arme. The place is huge! You could burn a day at the Musee d'Arme alone. Napoleon's tomb is duly impressive as well. The last guy to put France on the conquer map received a respectable send off. After Napoleon's tomb, we tried to hit the Rodin museum, but it was closed at 5pm. The gardens looked pretty impressive through the gates. Then, from there, we went back to our dump of a hotel on Rue Cler. Watch out, the whole street closes at 8pm sharp. We bought a baguette at the boulangerie, hit the boutcherie for meat, a fromagerie for cheese and a bottle of wine from the vin store. Perfect, though we almost didn't have the bottle uncorked for us. And each shop vendor knew exactly what we were planning to do - have dinner under the Eiffel Tower. Guess my idea wasn't too original. Noisy neighbors The walk through Le Parc du Champ du Mars was pleasant, other than trying to prevent spilling the bottle of wine. In the middle of eating our meat, stinky cheese, baguette and drinking the wine, the flashes on the Eiffel Tower went off, making the tower sparkle. Funny thing, it made Patty cry. It's one of those beautiful sights that raised emotions. Being decently buzzed might have helped with that, too. After we were done, we strolled back to our dump of a hotel, Le Grand Hotel Leveque. The place was stinking of smoke, me enjoying a runny nose from it and plenty of noisy neighbors. The only thing going for it was our inner courtyard room, making it easy to toss out peach pits and other miscellaneous things targeting the trash below. Quite medieval. Hardly slept that night. Not surprisingly, the center courtyard reeked of trash, but it overcame the smoke sneaking in under the door. Each odor was equally as bad, it was a choice you don't want to have to make. We chose to alternate poisons. Saturday, October 18, 2003 In the middle of the night, Patty caught her hair on the bed and started screaming, thinking someone was holding her by the neck. The whole time, I was saying "Patty, wake up. It's me!" I started speaking much louder until I finally got through. After that, I made sure there was a little light in the room to avoid incidents. Second international cold Woke up with a cold from the smoky dinner on Thursday - crap. I drugged up last night, so hopefully I'll feel better at the end of the day. Nope, ended up feeling bad the whole day. Oh well. We did the assault of the city anyway with a start of the sewers, Les Egouts. It was a short metro on the C RER train, get off at Pont L'Alma, wait until the sewers open at 11am, then use the Carte Musee a day past its expiration date to save money and we're in. The sewer system is quite amazing, as it handles 3 million cubic meters of sewage a day. And you walk right over the grating of the flowing sewage. Interestingly, there isn't any smell at all, no worse than the storm drains I used to play in. And, there were facts and explanations in English, making the experience much more interesting. We spent a good 2 hours down there. Random streets We grabbed some lunch and headed over to Denfort-Rochereau, a public-accessible catacomb, off the #4 metro line, about 3km south of the Seine. Make sure to bring your own flashlight with spare bulbs, as you'll be able to see much more. There are tons of bones in cross, heart and other shapes. Even the walls were interesting to look at in the empire of the dead. Then the strangest thing - you get dumped out of the side of a random building on a random street! After some medieval bone viewing, it was time to visit the post-modern paradise of Musee Picasso over near the Bastille. We transported on the metro and got as close as possible because the narrow streets are very difficult to navigate. By this time, we had secured 2 useful maps - Galleries Lafyette for the streets and a metro overlay map, given to us by a nice guy in the metro station ticket office. Again, without the metro lines overlaid on the city, you'll have a very hard time navigating the city. Previous page   Next page
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