travels.of.tara

December 10, 2017
Hostel

The last 2 and a half days have been tres excitee à Paris! Mostly, I feel like I’ve been recovering from the last few days of work and doing so by moving moving moving, and really walking walking walking. My phone app tells me I’ve walked about as many steps each of the last two days as the peak of my summer trip in Glacier National Park when I was hiking, though mostly-flat city walking is much easier. Combined with the cold and on-and-off rain I’m pretty tired, though!

I got to my hostel via rail and metro pretty easily, minus some confusion over the fact that the ticket was transferrable (get it together, NYC region). Transit makes sense here, like in most cities, and runs often and efficiently. The “Oops! Hostel” is fine. I’m in a 4-person dorm and people have been rotating in and out.

Mostly I’ve been keeping to myself so far, but I’ve been generous with my basic French phrases in public: merci, excuse-moi et pardon, bonjour, bon soir, au revior.  Everyone speaks English if I need to have a real conversation. But my French is decent enough that I can understand things if people go slowly.

After arriving I promptly took an accidental 2-hour nap into the evening to make up for not really sleeping on the plane, as I never do. I watched the first half of Wonder Woman and hopefully the flight back will let me see the second half (edit/spoiler alert—I finished it! So good!)! That night I ventured out for dinner at a quiet restaurant next to the hostel where I got some cheesy pasta and wine, then took the metro to visit le Tour Eiffel at night. It was lovely and I really enjoyed the hourly light show from the not-crowded park! I went up last time I was in Paris and didn’t feel the need to do it again. I walked around a bit more and across a nice bridge. The only down side was that my shoes got extremely muddy in the park. They were my boots which I bought so as to feel less touristy. It’s sneakers from here on out. Hopefully I can save the boots when I get home.

Yesterday, for my first full day, I walked around a lot. After breakfast in the hostel (set for everyone: a croissant and baguette plus coffee and juice – literally my dream as it’s socially acceptable to just eat lots of bread for a meal), I wandered through the quiet, Saturday morning Latin Quarter and into the Luxemburg Gardens, a lovely huge park and palace. There were tons of people running and doing various group exercise classes. It was sunny but very cold. I went through a busier shopping area with narrow streets, seeing cheese markets in the street and booths for a holiday market. I made it up to the Seine and explored for a bit, including a stop at Shakespeare and Company, a 17th Century English-language bookstore. It was quaint and popular, with a random cat hanging around the store. I saw some nice churches along my walk, including the Notre Dame cathedral.

Next, I took the train to Montmartre, known as a more bohemian/artsy neighborhood on a hill where the Moulin Rouge and Sacre Couer are located. I took a free walking tour with a nice guide named Sean (like past tours I’ve been on, they work for tips). We saw some cute independent shops and some beautiful architecture, and learned some fun local stories. At the end I went into Sacre Couer. Though I’m not really into churches for many reasons, I went in to warm up and sit down for a few minutes. It was huge and very beautiful inside, but it felt weird to be walking around among people with selfie sticks while a service was going on.

I walked back down the hill (and took a funicular down for part of it!) and stopped for a dessert and tea. By then it was getting dark out and I decided to head back. Walking all day is exhausting! I went to some grocery stores in the neighborhood by the hostel and ended up buying some wine and a snack, and that became my delicious dinner in the hostel. Wine is… so abundant in France. And so cheap. Some bottles were 3 euros (under $4). I splurged for a 5 euro Bordeaux plus a bottle opener. I enjoyed breaking the hostel rules and drinking in the room!

Today I started off with a day trip to Versailles, about an hour away by transit. The rain let up as I was there, but not before I lost my umbrella and got swindled into buying a cheap one that said Paris on it that immediately broke. I will buy another one tomorrow. The palace was a really great experience. It feels like a museum, but it’s living history as these are the rooms where Louis XIV slept and entertained guests. It’s excessive and luxurious and over-the-top but in a real, self-assured kind of way. The hall of mirrors was particularly amazing – literally a room with mirrors and chandeliers and statues that was only used as a passageway. I explored the gardens just a bit, but it was extremely windy plus a lot of things were kind of dead for the winter. But what I saw was very nice.

Back in Paris I went to briefly see the Arch de Triomphe, then walked down the Champs Elysee, the famous shopping boulevard. I bought a new bag at the Longchamps store! It was much cheaper than in the US because it is a French company! Hooray!

I continued walking for lack of anything else to do, or any real destination. I went through the Tulieres Gardens and to the outside of the Louvre. Right as I arrived it started raining so I went down into the Louvre and recovered a bit. There’s a mall attached to the Louvre so I ate there in a food court (eggplant parmesean with tiramisu!) and shopped around for a while to let the rain pass. I had some ambitions of doing a boat tour, but once again I was exhausted and decided to go back to the hostel and call it a night.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain most of the day, so I have an ambitious museum plan! I hope to eat more good food and not get too bogged down in the rain. Bon nuit!