PARisTrip 1: An Evening with Paris! – Prelude

One of the biggest advantages of being in Germany (in general, most of Europe) is that, you get a chance not just to visit other cities nearby, but you even get to travel to other countries. So when I was told I could be in Paris in just about six hours by bus, I obviously jumped at the opportunity! It is another matter that switching travel mates last-minute, took the flexibility of planning the tour out of my hand & I had to be content with a package tour, but what the heck – I was still going to spend the Diwali weekend in Paris!!!

We started off an hour later than scheduled due to bus arriving late – quite unlike what I had so far observed about Germany. Our tour-guide could converse in English, but would not oblige as throughout the bus journey, he made his announcements only in German. At first, his words made no sense to us and after a while we just stopped caring about it. For me bus journeys are the least comfortable of all the modes of transport, yet I did manage to sleep intermittently.

Thanks to the Schengen treaty, there weren’t even any “Welcome to France” or similar signs as the bus silently made its way from Germany into France. On the advice of friends & colleagues, we opted out of package sightseeing trip for the day & decided to explore the city on our own. Back in office, when my colleague had showed me the labyrinthine Metro Map of Paris, I was skeptical if we would be able to make our way through these criss-crossing lines all over the city. However, a single ride through the Metro that morning was enough to clear all doubts & we were ready to take on Paris with the confidence of a local.

Traveling through the Metro is extremely simple…

We got ourselves a Day Pass for Zone 1-2 (this is where most known tourist spots in Paris are)… at 5.50 € it couldn’t have got any cheaper to travel! We also armed ourselves with a map of Paris Metro (picked up from the ticket counter), which proved to be our survival weapon.

Tip: There are 14 Metro lines within Paris, each intersecting the others at a number of stations; “M” inside a circle is the sign to look out for when searching for a station. Mark out the source & destination stations on the map and see how they are connected. In case they are not on the same line, find out the shortest way through multiple lines noting the transit station(s) where they meet. In case, you are switching trains you don’t have to leave the station. All metro stations are marked with directions to platforms based on Line Number & Last Destination, so follow them. Before boarding any metro, you should be aware of the following:

Metro Line (1-14) (Route Number, different coloured lines on the map)

Final Destination of Line (This will give you the direction in which that metro is headed; you don’t want to be boarding the correct line but traveling in the opposite direction!)

Station Name where you are supposed to get down (transit or your final); some metro have PA systems, others don’t so keep track of the stations lest you skip the one you want to get down on.

Train timings are usually not a consideration as Metro trains ply with an amazing frequency. The maximum we had to wait for a metro was 9 minutes, average waiting time is 3-4 minutes. But it is still better to avoid hopping more than two lines in a single trip and instead plan your itinerary such a way that you see places in sequence.

“Sortie” is French for “Exit”, so if you have reached your destination station, head in this direction!

Given that we had less than 1.5 days to tour the city, in which we had to squeeze the still-pending hotel check-in et al, we headed straight for “Musée du Louvre”. Like most of the world, I was smitten by Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” & to be able to walk through his adventure trail was a dream. The very majestic façade of the Louvre greeted us as we took the stairs out of Metropolitan station. Even before we entered the portals of the museum, we were awed by the whole panorama of opulent buildings around us – all replete with carvings & splendid balustrades. Inside, the Pyramids struck us! They didn’t belong there, yet somehow their austerity gave them a befitting place in the heart of Louvre.

Though every second was ticking fast, we wanted to at least have a date with Mona Lisa – the world’s most famous painting and descended inside Pyramid to get the tickets. Walking inside the Denon Wing, we witnessed millennia of history before us in the form of huge sculptures, murals, artifacts and priceless paintings. It shattered us when we were told no cameras were allowed inside The Grand Galerie. No wonder, I had never seen anyone click a photograph alongside “La Joconde” or “Madonna on The Rocks”! Yet to see Da Vinci’s masterwork, the Florentine lady with the mysterious smile, with just a glass sheet (bullet-proof, I might add) between us was a moment to cherish. I am hardly the one to appreciate art as it is meant to be, but I salute the geniuses whose strokes deftly captured a radiant countenance, an innocent smile, full curves of human body and even folds of a drape, lifelike…

The biggest grouse I had against these tour operators was that after we had strained every bit of our time to be punctual for the tour bus, we were made to sit idle inside the bus before proceeding. We kept pulling one another from every place we visited lest we missed our bus, only to be wasting precious minutes twiddling our thumbs, hoping for the bus to move, later. Paris is so full of people and too from disparate nationalities that it is difficult to point out a single diaspora – it, in essence, seemed a multi-cultural city!

Quickly freshening up at the hotel (which, as expected, was nothing home to write about); we were back in the Metro, this time moving towards “Sacré Coeur”. Cafés & shops selling souvenirs dotted the street that took us up the Montmartre Hill to “Basilique du Sacré Coeur”. This place surely gave us a glimpse of local Parisian life and along the way I couldn’t help buying a few black-n-white prints of Paris monuments. Though there were a number of bistros lined up here, I couldn’t find anything worthwhile to satiate my vegetarian stomach.

We, for a change, strolled up flight of steps to the main cathedral stopping every few steps to slake our narcissistic urges by getting our pictures taken against the towering white cupolas. The panoramic view of Paris from atop the hill was astounding & we gave us time to soak in the sanguine ambience. While on one side we had an impromptu guitar rendition, on the other a brilliant composition by a street performer playing an accordion was commencing.  Inside it was as calm as a few hundred people can get; the glowing candles and exquisite frescoes lending the pristine interior of “Sacré Coeur” a peaceful aura.

Our next stop was “Grande Arche” – the business face of Paris. Now that I think about it, I feel we could have given this place a skip. We spent more time reaching here (and back) than looking at the glass high-rises all around this mammoth structure. Even though I found nothing “Paris” or special about it except for its sheer size, (thankfully) my travel mates enjoyed the environs. Perhaps, this was the only time when I felt we had enough time to tour Paris & due to this assumption our pace slackened.

P.S. This is the first of a three-part travelogue on Paris.