Saturday, May 25, 2013

Two Days in Paris: Adventure Layover Style Touring

 

Evening of May 11th:  Jet-Lagged and loving it!

We slept.  We slept like the dead.  And I mean the DEAD. 

One of the most difficult things you'll ever do is drag yourself from the horizontal to the vertical plane after a two hour nap, the afternoon after a transoceanic flight.  

The inertia of sleep... that sweet, utterly delicious nectar of heavy muscles, heavy eyelids, foggy-shrouded wit and the murmuring of your hind-mind singing "sleep... sleep... sleep" ... takes a gargantuan force of will to break.  When your entire being cries out for sleep, when you'd sell your mother, your dog, even your Beatles LP collection... for another 10 minutes of sleep, sitting up, then standing up, is one of the hardest things you'll ever do.  But simply standing up... and breaking the horizontal plane... is all you have to do.  Once you're up, you have it licked.

I was definitely not up.

And I must say this. Anyone who says "I can sleep on the plane!" is delusional.  I'm a professional traveler, and while I can usually catch some sleep while airborne (if I'm not flying the plane, that is), it's not 'real' sleep.  Not REM sleep.  Not recuperative sleep. 

So after our ocean crossing, Kori and I were starting our adventure with a sizable sleep deficit.  We had walked around for a few hours near Notre Dame earlier, while waiting for the hotel to clean the room... once we got in, however, the beds called our name loudly, and we slept for 2 and a half hours.

Kori (younger than me, and eager to see Paris) woke first.  She kicked my foot, which was dangling off the end of the short, european style twin bed.  Damn, being 6' 3" sucks sometimes.

"Lemmebe" I said groggily.  "I'm schleepun." Snort.  Ehrmagherd.

She kicked me again, harder.  Shit. 

"Ok... gettin' up."  Ten minutes of vertical and two espressos from the room machine later, I was ready.  We set out to see Paris.

Kori and I had discussed a plan of attack.  I've been to Paris many, many times as a working pilot.  How many?  Well, without checking my logbook, I know it's over twenty.  So I've seen almost everything touristy at one point of another.  But this was Kori's first time, and I wanted it to be a good one.

I made a list, from most important to see to least, of the major sights.  Tour Eiffel.  Louvre.  Musee' D'Orsay.  The Sacre Coeur.  The Catacombs.  Jim Morrison's grave.  Notre Dame. The Champs d'Elysees.  The Arc de Triomphe.  The Tuilleries.   Am I misspelling some of these names?  Probably.

There were a few others, but suffice it to say, that list itself is too big for two days.   We put our heads together, and came up with a plan.  Can we do/see/experience EVERYTHING? No.  But we CAN see the big stuff and experience the reality of Paris.  We came up with a list of must-see items.

Tour Eiffel-- the symbol of Paris everyone recognizes.  I took this photo from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.



The Louvre--famously closed on tuesdays, it's the home of everything from Egyptian Mummies and heiroglyphics to Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa to the Venus De Milo and Michelangelo's Slave.  It's got something for everyone.

The first of Kori's many "Oh my GOSH!" faces.



The Sacre Coeur--The lovely white cathedral on a hill overlooking the Montmarte section of Paris.  From it's steps, the entire city is at your feet.








The Tuilleries--The Gardens just west of the Louvre.  The Louvre, the Tuilleries, the Champs Elysee' and the Arc de Triomphe lie in a straight line that stretches almost 4 miles from east to west.  We walked the route that first night.





The Tuilleries have their own automatic lawnmowers.  Kori speaks their lingo.
Walking from the Tuilleries towards the Champs d'Elysees and the Arc in the distance.


There are 283 steps you have to climb when you go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.  Ask me how I know this useless, random fact.

As you can see, the first day was above ground... wandering and walking.  I am of the opinion that you can't really 'see' Paris unless you walk it.  And by walking it, you commit yourself to many, many miles of sights, sounds, smells and experiences that you wouldn't get if you used taxis or the Metro.

So that evening, and the next day, we resolved to move about the city on foot.  After walking from the Louvre, through the Tuilleries, along the Champs d'Elysees, we climbed the Arc de Triomphe and surveyed the city.

After the hike up, we found a nice Brasserie a couple blocks off the Champs and sat down for dinner. 

I'm starting to develop a taste for mineral water, or "l'eau avec gas." But I still enjoy my beers.  Being from Oregon, the French have yet to impress me with their beers. Just because they suck doesn't mean they're cheap, however.

This simple meal was one of the most delicious.  Steak Tartare, on the right, was incredible. The Croque Madam (basically a grilled ham and cheese sandwich baked with more cheese and and egg on top) was just shy of orgasmic.  The first of many, many incredible meals on this trip.

Dinner was spectacular in it's simplicity of design, it's complexity of tastes, smells and textures, and was amazingly cheap.  The beer was the most expensive part at 12 euros (French beer... especially Kronenbourg's 1664... is NOT worth the money.  Try one so you'll know, then never have another) and the Steak Tartare was only 10.  The croque was 5 or 6 euro, I don't remember.  Suffice it to say, the meal as a whole was inexpensive.

And delicious.  I can't explain... a grilled cheese sandwich and some raw hamburger.  But it was incredible.  The Steak was perfectly seasoned and was mixed with diced pickles and onions.  The croque was made of some kind of magical peasants' bread that smelled of rosemary.  That's all we needed... Kori and I resolved at that point to bypass every McDonald's we saw in France, no matter what.

And we did.  We saw at least ten McD's in France, and never even considered stopping in.

After dinner at the brasserie, a light rain began to fall.  It was nearing midnight, and we had a big day planned the next day.  We cabbed it back to the hotel, compared photos and experiences, and went to bed.

I was happy... my friend Kori had experienced her first day in Paris!  It was a good one... I had stopped counting the number of times she said "Oh My Gosh!" at fifteen.  Onward to day two, as the adventure was just beginning.

Go see something!

Moose

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