Travel Report: Paris

Once clear of the clutches of Air France baggage handling, my husband and I set off for the RER. We wanted to hit an ATM en route, but the ATM in Hall C at CDG had a very long line. We figured we'd just pay for the train tickets by credit card instead. As we approached the escalators for the RER we saw another bank and ATM, and used that to withdraw 1000FF ($149.49 on the date). We then went down the escalator to the ticket machines. Luckily, there was an option for "English", which we used. Unfortunately, the machine wouldn't accept our credit card (likely because it didn't have a smartcard chip), so we went back UP to the bank (which had a human as well as ATM) and asked for coins. The bank teller handed us 10 10FF coins in exchange for 1 100F bill. The RER tickets were 49FF each, so 10 10FF coins left us with 2FF in change.

By the time we had mucked about with the ticket machines, we'd missed the 10:40 express train. The next one was a 10:48 local, or a 10:55 express. We skipped the local (figuring it would be passed by the express anyways). The express didn't pass the local, but it did allow us to get choice seats and comfortably stow our luggage without too much hassle.

We took the RER (line B3) from CDG Terminal 2 to Chatelet, which I've been told is the biggest underground station anywhere in the world. I'd believe it. From the RER level we went up stairs (there were very very few escalators in any of the RER or Metro stations we went in) and were stopped by a woman saying "tickets?". I presumed she was an inspector doing a spot check but she wore no uniform. There were two camoflauge-uniform-clad men nearby carrying weapons. Ah, semiautomatic weapons in the underground - I felt right at home!

We showed our tickets to the "inspector" and then walked quite a distance to the RER line 14, aka Meteor. The Meteor is the newest Metro line, similar to the Jubilee Line Extension in London. It has no driver or operator, just automatic doors (and platform doors, so you can't throw yourself on the tracks accidentally). In addition, it's several cars but with articulation between them - no doors. So you could sit at the front (which I did! I wanted to pretend I was the driver!) and look allll the way down to the other end of the train, some six cars back. Very cool. :)

We took the Meteor from Chatelet to Concorde, which was the end of the line. From there we went up stairs and along another long hallway (though not as long as the one at Chatelet) to the Metro Line 8, which we took direction Balard. We rode just a few stops to Ecole Militaire, which was the closest to our hotel. Once at Ecole Militaire, we went up the stairs (luckily we stumbled out the correct exit), and looked at the map to figure which direction we were going. That solved, we were off to our hotel, which was the Hotel Alma, a three-star hotel on a quiet street called Rue de l'Exposition in the 7th arrond. More information about the hotel on the web here.

The hotel was not far from the Eiffel Tower, but you'd never know it from the neighbourhood. It was not tourist inclined AT ALL - which was a plus in my book. The hotel was tiny, just 30 rooms. We'd found it through one of the many Paris hotel websites that I'd searched. The rate was supposed to be 591FF/night including breakfast. They ended up charging us 535FF/night not including breakfast. We checked in to the hotel, told them our bag would be arriving courtesy of Air France, and looked at our room. My mother had warned me that we wouldn't be able to swing a dead cat in it, and she wasn't kidding.

That done, we dumped our few things off and went in search of lunch. I was starving! We took a left out of our hotel and ended up on a street which had a Patisserie on it. We walked in and viewed their menu, and settled on a pair of paninis. One "poulet" (chicken, which also had cheese on it) and one tomato basil & mozzarella. YUM. They were incredible, and it wasn't just the hungry me talking. :)

From there we walked across the Pont d'Alma (I deliberately avoided anything to do with the whole Diana crash, even though there was a monument) over the Seine to the right bank. We walked down the river and up towards Concorde where we walked through the incredibly expensive Fauchon. I thought that's what food prices were like in Paris. Luckily, I was wrong!

From Fauchon we headed down Rue de Rivoli, stopping at a couple of bookshops (WH Smiths and another one whose name I don't remember). By this point the number of tourists around were increasing (annoyingly so), as was the rain, so we headed inside to the Louvre. We'd planned to buy the Carte Musees Monuments pass. The price was 160FF/person (about $22), and would get us into many museums, including all of the ones we wanted to see this trip. The Louvre alone would cost about 50FF/each. I knew that the Sunday we were in paris the Louvre would be free, but I didn't want to be crammed in with everybody else.

After buying the Carte Musees pass (which was an ordeal, we went to three different desks before we found the right place), we went and had a sitdown in the Louvre cafe with a couple of drinks and the map to plan our attack. Our first place to visit was the Medieval Louvre excavation. It was really cool. I expected the Louvre to be all art hanging on a wall, but I was so wrong. From the Medieval Louvre we went and viewed the sculptures, but what really blew me away was the architecture of the whole place, and most of all, the CEILINGS. Most people don't think about ceilings, but I think I spent more time looking UP while I was at the Louvre than anything else (oh, and yes, the Mona Lisa is incredibly small).

After we were done with the Louvre we hopped on the Metro and went up to the Musee Marine near Trocadero. It was still raining out quite heavily, and we only managed to make it there by 1700. Closing was 1800, so we were forced to be out by then. Luckily, while the museum was quite nice, it didn't take us long to get through it. Afterwards, we walked back across the Seine, past the Eiffel Tower (which we could see the base of, but because it was so rainy we couldn't see any higher).

We ambled back towards our hotel and guess what we passed en route - a GROCERY STORE! And what's more, the prices were *awesome*. We bought a 6 pack of .5 litre water bottles, some yoghurt, snackfood, and a ton of British sweets. The total cost was less than USD $10. We'd noted earlier that our hotel room had a fridge (as their "mini bar"), so we had somewhere to cool the waters and put yoghurt. When I stayed in London while on a school trip some years back, I actually stored things that needed keeping cold out on the windowsill. Our Paris hotel room didn't have a windowsill as such (but it did have a huge door-style window which swung open), so I was glad of the fridge. The only minus about the grocery store is that there was no Ribena available.

We went back to the hotel and asked at the front desk about our missing bag. No sign of it. I rang the AF baggage office who assured me it was out for delivery. I figured it would arrive while we slept. No problem. I preferred to have my toothbrush, but I could go without it for one night. We headed upstairs to our room, put the groceries away, and then went out in search of food for Christopher. I wasn't really hungry (he was), and we ended up at a tiny Chinese/Vietnamese place literally 100 yards from our hotel. He ordered a "bo bun" (beef with rice noodles), and asked "chaud, s'il vous plais" (hot, please). It was expensive - about 20FF (ha ha, that's about $3). He ate the bo bun back at our hotel room while we poured over our guidebooks figuring out what we'd do the next day. Then we crashed (exhaustion).

04Mar (Saturday)

We didn't set an alarm, but managed to wake up by about 8am. We ran down to the little patisserie that we'd had lunch from the day before (after asking about our bag at the front desk - it still hadn't arrived), and ended up with a pair of croissants. Let me tell you, I won't be able to eat anything but French croissants ever again. It's like eating bagels from New York. There's nothing like perfection.

I spent more time on the phone with Air France baggage (who kept changing their story), but refused to let their idiocy ruin our trip. We had wanted to spend Saturday at Le Bourget Air & Space Museum, but we chose to stay closer to "home". After eating our croissants and yoghurt, we set out to Invalides, and the Musee d'Armee and Napoleon's Tomb. It was quite interesting, but unfortunately the WW2 exhibit was closed. That's something we'll have to go back to Paris for. Another minus, the Soldier's Chapel was closed as there was a service being held. We could hear the music and see part of the service from inside Napoleon's Tomb.

It was almost 1200 when we left, and one croissant and some yoghurt does not take one very far. There was a cafe that we tried to stop at, but they only had a set menu for lunch (and I didn't want anything that restrictive). We ended up back at our favourite patisserie again, and each had a slice of some kind of pie-shaped pastry with ham and cheese in it. YUM. Another try for AF, more assurances (more lies).

I couldn't wait any longer. I ripped open the hotel-provided shampoo (VERY smelly, and no hypoallergenic, but luckily I wasn't allergic) and took a shower. I got back into my smelly clothes and just as we were getting ready to head out to the Science Museum, a van pulled up out front. The van was perhaps 5 feet long (in cargo space), but there was one driver and one person in the passenger seat. And the driver climbed inside the cargo area and was in there for FOUR MINUTES before he came out with my bag. What was he doing in there (I don't think I want to know. I'm glad my bag can't tell tales).

I RAN down the stairs so I could sign for my bag, and in the process, tripped and sprained my ankle. My fault, I know, I shouldn't have been so hasty. I was just so glad to get the bag. I signed for the bag (with a time & date stamp) and took it back upstairs. The first thing I did was brush my teeth. The SECOND thing I did was change into fresh clothes. I felt much better afterwards.

I squeezed my then-swollen ankle back into my sneakers (luckily I'd worn hightops), and we headed down to Ecole Militaire to take the Metro to Cite des Sciences. En route we stopped in yet another grocery store which was just above the Ecole Militaire stop. We bought a bag of potato crisps - salt & vinegar, and VERY vinegary. We finished them while on the Metro. Yum.

We've done science museums in almost every city we've been to, and Cite des Sciences was right up there with the best of them. The building was striking, and the exhibits were very good. The main minus was that most of the exhibits were only detailed in French. The last outside-English-speaking nation science museum we went to was the Experimentarium in Copenhagen. That museum had everything detailed in Danish, Swedish, and English. I wished the Cite had been as completist. Some exhibits were bilingual, but the vast majority (including the temporary exhibit on cartography that Christopher wanted to see) were not.

After the Cite we headed back to the Rue de Rivoli in search of Bodum and Marks & Spencer. We never found either of them, so we wound up in the Carrousel Louvre. There was a food court which we chose to eat at (even food courts in Paris are good!), and we browsed the Virgin Megastore and mini Bodum store. I was hoping for a Bodum store the size of the one in Copenhagen but it was not to be. The Carrousel Louvre mall was very twisty, and the lavs were IMPOSSIBLE to find.

By this point it was after 2000 and we took the Metro back to our hotel. We could have walked but my ankle was still not happy with me. We made it to Ecole before 2100, and stopped in the grocery store (which had a 2100 closing time) to buy more water and more yoghurt, not to mention more crisps. I spent the evening reclining to help the ankle heal up.

I didn't mention one minus of the hotel room - no double bed. I jammed the two beds together which gave us marginally more room, and gingerly put my ankle on the bed. Ouch. I tried not to get up at all for the rest of the evening, and mostly succeeded. We had another early night, thanks to exhaustion.

05March

Christopher was still asleep on Sunday morning when I headed out in search of breakfast. Our favourite patisserie was closed so I went down to the tiny grocery store that we'd stopped at on Friday night (near the Eiffel Tower, not the one near the Ecole Militaire metro station). It wasn't open (no surprise) but there was a patisserie nearby that was. Their prices were a little higher than our favourite place (it was 13FF for an apple pastry and a brioche. Our favourite was about 3FF cheaper for similar items), but on a Sunday morning, you can't be too picky.

When I returned Christopher was awake, so we ate our yoghurt and pastries before getting ready to head out. Our first stop on Sunday morning was the Arc de Triomphe. Rather than take the Metro there, we walked, and a nice walk it was too (except my ankle was hurting still).

After a quick stop at the Arc we headed for the Metro to Gare du Nord to get the bus to Le Bourget Air & Space museum. It took quite a while to find the bus, then to figure out when it would arrive. It finally did, and we arrived at Le Bourget just before noon. I was quite shocked - the place was EMPTY, and even worse, there was no cafe (just a couple of vending machines). We left the museum and ran across the road to a chinese/vietnamese place so we could refuel before viewing the planes.

Le Bourget was a very nice museum. The historical bits were different than the traditional "first man saw the birds, then the Wright brothers came". Since it was French, it was "first man saw the birds, then the Montgolfier brothers came". Hardly a mention was made of Orville & Wilbur. :) The historic gallery was quite impressive, with catwalks for viewing the suspended aircraft from eyelevel - a VERY nice touch. Unfortunately, the space gallery was closed for renovation. Christopher said (and I agree) that he hoped when the space gallery was reopened that it would be as nice as the historical gallery.

Of course the highlight of the LeBourget visit was Concorde. We've seen the British preproduction model at Duxford. The museum had dedicated a hangar to it, and even let people walk through Concorde. It was not nearly as nice inside as the one at Duxford (probably because the preproduction was in better shape than the prototype). Nor was there a friendly old guy inside who would tell you every last thing you wanted to know about the plane. In fact, the whole hangar was deserted - in the twenty minutes we spent there, I saw a total of five other people in the hangar with us.

We viewed the other hangars and the outside planes. Interestingly enough, there was a functional-looking Air France 747 (10-holer upper deck). The engines were still on it! Either this plane is flyable (in which case what it is doing wasting money sitting on the tarmac at Le Bourget!) or it's not (in which case, what are the engines still doing on it?). The 747 was next to a Mercure. I don't know how many unscrapped Mercures are out there (after all, only 12 were made). It was interesting to see one of the few planes out there which flew commercially but had less models produced than Concorde.

After we finished at the museum, we took the 350 bus back to the Metro, and went down to the Museum of the Legion of Honor. Unfortunately, it was free entry day, and the museum was quite busy. I wanted to see the medals, etc, but the throngs of people made it difficult. I did view the samples given to the Museum by the Duchess of Windsor (worn by the Duke of Windsor).

The nearby d'Orsay museum was next, and once again it was free entry day. Ugh. The museum either did not have air conditioning or was not running it. The place was incredibly hot, especially on the upper levels. We went by the architecture exhibit because we wanted to, and some Monet stuff so we could tell Christopher's mother that we did, and left the museum.

I was only too pleased to leave the d'Orsay. Not that it wasn't grand (it was), but the heat plus the large number of people made me feel rather overwhelmed. We walked down along the Seine and ended up in the Latin Quarter instead. Christopher was hungry (I wasn't), so we stopped at a little creperie near the university and he got a jambon et fromage crepe. It was yummy. I realized that perhaps I *was* hungry, and rather than waste precious time sitting down and eating, we found a boulangerie that was open and bought a baguette. The Latin quarter was really neat, as most things were actually *open*, even "late" on a Sunday night.

The baguette was incredible. Rather than be the typical cream-coloured bread, it was wheat. We walked around the Latin Quarter and then along the Seine while ripping of chunks of coffee-coloured bread. YUM. The baguette was quickly eaten (I was afraid we'd be giving it to the pigeons).

The next stop was a couple of bookstores in the 5th arrond: Abbey Bookshop (which ended up being closed, which the guidebooks said it shouldn't be) and Shakespeare & Co (which *wasn't* closed, but was rather haphazardly organized). While there a couple of people nabbed Christopher and asked him to take their picture in front of Notre Dame. Turned out one of them had gone to Harvard. Small world, etc!

There aren't too many things to do late on a Sunday night in Paris. We basically had two choices: bowling, and the Pompidou museum. The weather was still quite nice so we ambled towards the Pompidou. By the time we arrived, the museum was open to one and all (obviously free Sunday again). We chose to leave, but ended up going back. The museum staff first made us check our backpack in the cloakroom (even though others were allowed to keep theirs), and then didn't let us take a bottle of water in with us. Christopher drank it on the spot, amazing the staffer. :)

The Pompidou was pretty neat. I'm not much of an art girl, but modern art is just too strange. Funnily enough, there was an iMac on display under plastic (one of the original bondi blue ones). We spent more time looking at the sculptures than the art on the wall. Some of the sculptures/3-d displays were very strange.

After the Pompidou we headed back to the hotel for an early night (well "early" was about 2130). We packed up our bags so that the next morning would not be taken up with such mundane tasks, then crashed.

06March

We were up with the birds - about 6am, and had our yoghurts in the room, followed by pastries on the run. We walked down the left bank of the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower, then crossed the Seine on the footbridge and started walking eastward. Our original destination was Brentano's over on Rue de l'Opera, but we never made it. Instead, we wound up in front of Marks & Spencer at 0900 (opening time). We went inside and bought a bag ful of food (crisps, candy, etc). None of it was fresh (as in unpackaged), but I thought it might give the customs guy a heart attack. No big deal. :)

We must have walked a good 2-3 miles in the morning. After Marks & Spencer we got back on the Metro for Ecole. While at Ecole we stopped at the ticket machine to buy our Metro/RER tickets for the return to CDG. The machine would not disgorge them using our credit card, so we went upstairs to the grocery store and bought a bottle of water just to get some change.

We went back to our hotel, checked out, and came back to the metro. We had a painless set of connections to CDG.

I really really loved Paris. I've never been to France before (short of being conceived there), and I would go back in a heartbeat. March was such an ideal time to go for us. There were very few crowds (short of the d'Orsay on Sunday), and the weather was perfect for walking (not too hot). The hotel rates were cheap (ended up being about $210 for 3 nights), as was the food.

Back to the BOS-JFK-CDG-JFK-BOS air trip report

Back to my trip reports page

Back to my homepage