first real day in Paris

The 20th was our first true day in Paris. We got out the door a little late after a desultory breakfast at our squishy Ibis hotel.

We have an itinerary designed by a friend of Maya's, Pierre Yves, from the French embassy in Switzerland. Pierre very graciously put this together for us at short notice, typing it out on a laptop with a German keyboard - which has made for some interesting spelling - but we've generally been able to follow its most excellent advice.

We caught the metro straight to the Arc De Triomphe and there I had my first tingle of the trip. It was the 'weight of history' tingle, the one I'd last had when on my walking tour of Berlin after Christmas 2005.

We've all seen the Arc. We all know where it is and what it looks like. Instantly recognisable, its size hits you with a palpable whack when you ascend from the metro and it's just *there*.

Standing underneath the Arc, the stonework is far more intricate and detailed than you can imagine without actually being there. It honours those who fought for France in the Napoleonic wars and also houses the tomb of the unknown soldier.

It's a solemn place, despite the noise from crazy Parisian traffic careening around the massive roundabout that I wouldn't want to negotiate. The panhandlers are also annoying and have a techniqe common to Paris that I've not seen before. They have the look of the Romani about them and come up to you asking "Excuse me, do you speak English?" - a disarming question. Fortunately Jus was well acquainted with their tactics and dragged me away. Mute stares were enough to get rid of them from then on.

Looking through the Arc stretches the Champs-Élysées in an unbroken line for 2kms stretching to the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre. It's an impressive site.

We walked through the thronging crowds, stopping occasionally at a patisserie or Jus' favourite perfumery in Paris, soaking up the ambience of the second most expensive strip of real-estate in the world, after New York's Fifth Avenue.

At the end of this space, near the site of what was once the Palais des Tuileries, we stopped for lunch at a place considered by Pierre Yves, the architect of our itinerary, to be the quintessential Parisian tea-room experience.

Ladurée has been in existence on the Rue Royal since 1862. Originally a bakery, it became a tearoom for both men and women in 1871, a first for the time and has been a Paris institution for those in the know ever since.

It's a tiny cramped space, with a truly French decor, shabby chic at its absolute finest. We saw some extremely uptight upper-class taking tea there and it was fortunate we arrived early - by the time we left the line was several metres out the door just to buy pastries over the counter.

I can't begin to describe how cool this place is. I read once in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" the main character exposing the differences between old and new money, to paraphrase - new money restore antique furniture to make it look new, old money leaves it as it is.

Ladurée is definitely old money, and it really works. The marble-top tables that look like they've been in existence since the original tea-room are reminiscent of old-style school desks and those that have cracked surfaces are left in use. The tea is fantastic and served in silver pots with real ivory spacers on the handles to dissipate the heat. These too look as old as the building. The food was great, the tea exquisite and the ambience absolutely everything you could want from a French tearoom.

We then wandered through the gardens across the baking heat of the sand and stone path to the Louvre.

It's impossible to describe just how big this thing is. It's huge. It's beyond huge. You could land a few jets side-by-side between the two wings that embrace the gardens. And standing in the centre is the controversial Louvre pyramid, built in 1989 by Ieoh Ming Pei, which is the entrance to the museum.

Having been on the road so long, we were a little confused about the date and thought we only had 90 minutes to get through it all - when in fact the Louvre was open late.

So we raced through at a break-neck pace until we realised our mistake - but it was a fortunate one, as it got us through the areas where most of the tourists congregate and got to see some of the more interesting and esoteric stuff.




I've now seen the real Mona Lisa. And The Wedding at Cana. The latter is huge, very impressive. We weren't allowed to take photos in much of the Louvre, so I can't show you much here. I still haven't sorted out my feelings on the Mona Lisa. Suffice to say it's a moving experience, but whether this is due to its artistic merits, fame or a combination of both is hard to say.

The most fascinating area is the ancient Egyptian rooms. They've got statues and statuettes, busts and tablets, artifacts galore - some ranging up to 4500 years old. Just amazing. The oldest sculptures were a series of fish still looking ok six thousand years later.

Inside the Louvre is a maze of unbelievable proportions. Room after room displays only a part of the 300,000 strong collection. Due to the lighting I couldn't really get any decent shots that show how big it is, but the size of the building itself is at least as impressive as the artwork it contains.

To give you an idea, the Louvre is itself built on top of a much older structure, the so-called 'medieval louvre'. You can see from the photos I have (or will!) put up, that the entire castle is contained in just about 1/4 of the main square of the current Louvre and is completely dwarfed by its wings.

After we left the louvre, we got a little lost and snippy trying to find an ATM somewhere in St Germaine. We smoothed it over with a beer, crepes and espresso and set out in search of the Batobus, a ferry that covers all the sights of the river seine. While it was too late to catch the ferry, Jus pointed out something rather wonderful.

For the hours after work during the long summer dusk, Parisians seem to congregate on bridges, parks, squares, anywhere really and have a bit of a picnic. It was so social and so fabulously spontaneous, needing nothing more than a bit of bread, cheese and wine and totally foreign. It made me miss my friends and wish we could do something like this in Paris one day. This was just an ordinary Wednesday afternoon for them.

After wandering around Pont Neuf, we started looking for the restaurant in Place Dauphine. 'Place' usually indicates a square - this was more of a triangle. A few cosy little restaurants, we think, given Pierre Yves' description that it didn't really matter which one, lined the square were locals were playing Pétanque. Pétanque is a kind of metal-balled bowls played just about anywhere - so long as wine is involved.

Dinner was fantastic, intimate and very very French - were were surrounded almost entirely by locals. A great suggestion.

We wandered back to the Metro, footsore and sick of the trip to Epanay. Thank god we got to move into the city the next day.