Paris, France with a daytrip to Brugges, Belgium Thursday, May 10 – Friday, May 18, 2012

Our flight left Knoxville about 11:15 AM on May 10, 2012 but we had about a three hour layover in Charlotte.  The Charlotte airport is fairly nice and we had a sandwich at Quiznos and a truffle apiece at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and a yogurt at another place.  Our Paris flight left around 5:30 PM.  Regrettably, we had an older model Boeing 767 without individual monitors so we couldn’t amuse ourselves watching movies.  Moreover, the screens for the cabin movie were very small and the movie wasn’t something that interested us.  We arrived in Paris around 8 AM.  Customs was very perfunctory and they just stamped our passport without asking any questions.  The Charles de Gaulle airport itself was very modern when it was built but it is dated now.  The design is odd with several circular terminals and off of each terminal there are about six satellite terminals that are reached by moving underground walkways.  These walkways in turn are accessed in the main terminal by several transparent tubes containing moving walkways in the inner atrium.  We took a taxi from the hotel for about $95 since we weren’t familiar with the train/bus system.  But now that we know a little more about Paris we could take the train/bus and save some money.  Besides, the traffic was just horrible going into Paris and was at a crawl much of the way.  A non-rush hour trip is about $20 less.

Our hotel room at the Hotel Tour Eiffel was very small with no end tables nor chairs and the bathroom was so small that the toilet was set at an angle so that you could actually sit down.  The TV only received about 12 channels and the only English channel was CNN.  The room did have a safe to keep valuables but when I tried to operate it, I promptly broke the aluminum key off in the lock.  Hotel rooms are small in the inner European cities but this one was much smaller than other rooms we had stayed in.  However, the room was clean and functional.  And there were five bakeries within a block of our hotel so that partially made up for the small room.  We always had at least one pastry per day and sometimes had a large meringue as well.  Fortunately we walked 6-12 miles per day to burn off the calories.  The hotel was about 1 mile from the Eiffel Tower and we tried a couple of times to go up in it.  However, the lines were always incredibly long since only one of four elevators was working to go to the top and we would have had to wait a couple hours in line.  There are stairs to the 1^st and 2^nd level but you can not take the stairs to the 3^rd level, i.e., the top.  Our hotel was also next to the Romanian embassy and we had a nice view out of our 4^th floor window into their garden behind the hotel. 

The highlight of our trip was ironically a daytrip to Brugges, Belgium.  This is an old city a little ways inland from the coast and did not see industrial development of 19^th and 20^th century nor much war damage so its many old buildings are very well preserved.  The are also many canals and it is called the Venice of the north.  Interestingly, the southern part of Belgium speaks Walloon which is really French and the northern part speaks Flemish which is dialect of Dutch.  The two groups don’t get along and our French guide said she is better off speaking English in Brugges which is in the Flemish part of Belgium even though people can speak French and usually English too.  As another side note, the border into Belgium is pretty much invisible although there is a border control point and the Belgiums do occasionally check identity of people entering.  Hence the reason for our tour company, CityRama, saying that everyone should carry their passport.  One fellow didn’t and so had to get off the bus in Paris before we started and run back to his hotel.  He delayed our start by about 10 minutes.  In Brugges our guide took us through the city and talked about the history of the city and many of the beautiful old buildings.  Her English was very good.  Then we had a couple of hours on our own to shop, take the canal boat tour which was included in the tour price, and eat.  We did take a canal boat tour which was fun.  We also had some truffles at the Godiva Chocolate shop.  Godiva was originally a Belgium company but then was bought by Campbell Soup and then sold to a Turkish company a few years ago.  We ate our main lunch at Casa de Patatas (Spanish for House of Potatoes) and had a big hamburger and French fries.  Of course we had to stop at the one bakery and have an Apfelflap.  There weren’t many bakeries but lots of chocolate and lace shops.  We also met a nice retired couple who live in Charlotte, NC.  He used to be president of University of Montana and we had a nice talk about life in academia.  To get to Brugges, we took a double decker bus and we sat in the top level to have a nice view of scenery.  We made one stop half way to Brugges and then again coming back to Paris.  France is like Britain in that along the freeways there aren’t shops, gas stations, etc. at the exits but rather there are little built up areas periodically along the freeway itself with a little shopping center containing restaurants, groceries, gift shops, a hotel, and gas station.  Our group was mostly Americans but with about 30% Spanish too.  When we got off the bus in Brugges we were told to be back at bus by 3:45 and that the bus would leave at 4:15.  One couple didn’t get back in time and even though the bus waited for 10 minutes, they didn’t show up and were left behind. 

We enjoyed walking around Paris.  The area we stayed in was a richer area since that’s where many embassies are located and government workers live.  There were also lots of small shops and cafes.  Interestingly, it seemed like all the small bakeries and sandwich places sold only a few soft drinks but always had Coca Cola.  It seemed like Coke was very popular.  We also soon found out that the scale of the city was much bigger than we had realized.  What looked on the map to be not too far away were usually a couple of miles.  Paris is very big and 12,000,000 people live in the urban area. It has many wide boulevards, many trees, large beautiful stone buildings and was very clean.  To get around, the metro (subway) was essential and relatively easy to use.  What would have taken 1 ½ hours to walk took only about 15 minutes by metro and tickets were about $2.20 for one trip. 

Here are some day-by-day highlights:

·         Friday:  We got to the hotel about 10 AM but the room not ready until noon.  So we tried to walk to meeting place for a walking tour Janis had found on the web and that started at 1 PM.  It was raining and chilly and we realized we couldn’t easily make sure that we had our room and also make the tour so we had to abandon the tour. 

·         Saturday:  We went to Louvre and saw some of the famous works including the Mona Lisa, which was surrounded by a throng of people, the statue called Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo plus Hammurabi’s Code.  As much as we love art (though not at all experts) it does get to be too much after a while.  We also saw the famous glass pyramid which was designed by I.M. Pei and serves as the museum entrance.  It is in the central plaza of the museum and surrounded by wings of the Louvre.  It received a lot of criticism when it was built but it seemed to work as a design to us.  Ironically, the Eiffel Tower was heavily criticized too when it was built.

·         Sunday:  This was our Brugges trip and we had to be ready to be picked up at 6:30 AM and did not get back about 9 PM.  Regrettably we woke up the hotel clerk when we left since he sleeps on the couch in the lounge area.  Since we got back to Paris so late, we had the tour driver drop us off at the Eiffel Tower to enjoy it at night.  At night it has a beautiful orange glow from lights on it.  At the top of the hours it has hundreds of bright white lights that go off randomly and look like hundreds of camera flashes and make the Tower sparkle.

·         Monday:  We did the Notre Dame cathedral on this day which was sunny and the temperature was in the high 60’s.  It was a lot of walking even though we took the metro to Louvre in order to buy a tour ticket for Versailles and then walked over from there and then back to the hotel.  We did find a used book store that stocked only English titles but we didn’t buy anything.  We also ate lunch at one of the street cafes although we ate inside and had omelets.  All the parks were full of people taking their lunch and soaking up the sunshine.  Interestingly we did see several soldiers with automatic weapons walking around and also saw some at the airport and around the government buildings.

·         Tuesday:  We took the subway to one of the big shopping streets and went to the Galleries Lafayette.  This is a huge upscale department store similar to Harrods and has a beautiful atrium in the center.  The food court had incredible selections of meats, cheeses, desserts, etc.  From there we went to the Centre Georges Pompidou which is devoted to modern art.  It is a museum often shown on TV which is distinguished by having most of the mechanical equipment and escalators on the outside.  There were some interesting works on display but had a lot of works that we just didn’t get.  We did have a nice savory chicken pastry on the way there though.  We took the metro back towards our hotel but stopped on the other side of the river in order to see the Grand Palace which has a big glass atrium.  But it didn’t seem like it was open to the public without paying.  But we did find ourselves in the midst of dozens of police vans full of police and many others milling about.  We didn’t realize that this was the inauguration day for France’s new president, Francois Hollande, and that the Elysee Palace was just north of us.  For dinner we went to a nearby grocery store and bought some lettuce, sliced cheese, and slice turkey to make some wraps.

·         Wednesday:  We took a guided tour of Versailles in the morning.  Travel again was by a double decker bus and was about a 40 minute trip to the south.  The Versailles Palace and gardens are magnificent although all the furniture was sold off during the revolution and so the furniture there are pieces from that period but not the original.  The Hall of Mirrors is of course the most impressive part.  The palace is huge and we saw only a part of it during our two hour tour.  Both at the Eiffel Tower and at Versailles there are dozens of what seemed to be immigrants from former French African colonies selling trinkets – mostly little colored Eiffel Tower key chains that were stored on a big steel ring.

·         Thursday:  We tried to go to the Maritime Museum since we’ve had good luck with enjoying such museums.  But it was closed since it was a holiday (Ascension).  We did walk around the nearby Passy Cemetery which is an above ground cemetery with many famous people buried there.  The above ground vaults were quite striking and “hauntingly” beautiful.  We also went to the Hotel Invalides which was built by King Louis the XIV so that his wounded and old soldiers could be taken care of.  It’s now a war museum and we toured the WW I and WW II museums as well as the museum of old armor and weapons and also saw Napoleon’s tomb.  For dinner we had probably our only authentic French meal at a brasserie nearby.  We shared a pumpkin and chestnut soup, a salmon club sandwich for me and a potato omelet for Janis.  They were all exceptionally delicious.  Our other meals included Italian restaurants, Panini’s, and sandwiches.

·         Friday:  We left the hotel at 8 AM for our trip back to the U.S.  Although our flight #787 was uneventful, the same flight four days later was the one on which a woman told a stewardess that she had a device implanted in her body which caused the plane to divert to Maine escorted by two F-15 fighters.

Some further comments:

·         Most people in the small shops did not seem to know much English.  Many people have said that they really can speak English but just don’t want too.   We’re not convinced that is true.  From our experience, it is very hard to learn another language if one isn’t immersed in it.  But most of the restaurants and tourist areas had fluent English speakers.  So we were disappointed in not being able to talk with Parisians and French people about their views of what was happening in France and Europe.  Our hotel clerks were very nice and polite but just weren’t very chatty unlike other countries.  And even if the bakery shop clerks could speak English, there were always lines of customers.

·         We also read that the French are very well dressed but that was misleading.  There certainly were many well dressed Parisians but there were also many dressed very casually but not as casual as Americans.  There also not very many obese French.

·         We had visions of dining casually at an outdoor café but the streets in the area we were in had a lot of car traffic and narrower sidewalks than imagined.  It didn’t really seem that much fun.  Admittedly, there are a lot of restaurants in the areas we visited.