Hitting the Tourist Track in Paris

Today we’d planned to really hit the tourist track. Using the metro, Michael had worked out the changes we’d need to make to get to the different destinations. Now the way the metro works, it seems, is that it costs 1.70 Euros for a one way ticket to anywhere within the city boundaries. You can change trains or directions as many times as you like as long as you don’t leave the underground.

Our first stop for the day was the Bastille. We entered the underground at Sentier, which is very close to where we are staying. We bought return tickets from the bloke at the Information/ticket counter, there was not long to wait for the train, which was not very full.  Two changes; at Reaumur Sebastopol and at Les Halles and we were there. Now, the Bastille no longer exists, in its place is a very tall monument, Colonne de Juillet (July Column) it is 52metres tall with the golden winged figure of the Angel of Liberty at its top, in his right hand he holds a flaming torch in his left he clutches a length of chain, there is a star on his head. This monument is dedicated to the memory of those who died in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. It stands in the centre of a busy intersection where 6 roads meet.

Metro station

Colonne de Juillet marks the spot where the Bastille once stood.

The Angel of Liberty crowns the Colonne de Bastille.

 On one of these roads, Rue de Lyon, overlooking the Colonne de Julliet, is the Opera de Paris Bastille. We decided to explore a little further as Michael had read in one of the guide books that there are some charming little passages running off the Rue Saint Antoine and with our trusty Paris Mapguide at the ready we set out to find them. Many artisans have their ateliers in these passages. We passed a church on our left, which I later discovered is called the Temple Sainte Marie and almost opposite this in the Rue de Birague we saw a red and cream bricked building straddling the street, with an open archway at street level to allow access.

Temple Sainte Marie

this building caught our eye and we went to investigate.

There was a sign reading Maisson de Victor Hugo so we went to investigate. The shops lining this street were delightful, we stopped to help a little lady who was struggling to lift the grate that protects her front window at night. Her shop sold the most delightful children’s clothes. All made in France, she told us, by her niece, from French materials. There were some lovely little felted jackets and hats, skirts and pants. A few doors away a little jewellers caught my eye. I had decided to shout myself a pair of earrings or a brooch and it was in this shop, Ubu Paris, that I was to find the earrings that I had been searching for.

Sipetit, selling childrens clothes

the hat, scarf and jacket are made of felted wool.

We walked to the red and cream building and passing through the archway found ourselves facing a quadrangle of buildings built of the same materials. In the centre was a fenced park set out in a formal structured design. This was the Place des Vosges, at its centre is a statue of Louis XIII on a horse, at each corner is a fountain set in the centre of a grassed area, each bounded by 2 rows of parallel small tree plantations with seating between them. It had a semi-formal feel to it that was just delightful and very French.

Louis XIII, in the Place des Voges 

Trees planted in the Place des Voges

One of four fountains set in each corner of the square.

 Leaving the garden and walking back across to the buildings, the ground floor was cloistered and we entered and walked along this covered area, where there were some galleries, shops and restaurants, all very smart. In one of these galleries we watched a little dog on a white bench rolling around having a wonderful time, by the time I got my camera out he had stopped and stood looking out the window at us!

"Hey! You, oui you Aussies, what are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a dog in a gallery before?"

In another gallery, this mesh sculpture cast a photo-like image onto the wall.

Under the cloisters the key stone reads 28 Avril 1764

 We lingered here for a while and found in one corner a door that led into another little garden area around which is built a town manor which belongs to the state and is now The Hotel Sully.  The Hotel has the obligatory sculptures and carved doors, and as we went through an archway and out the other side there was a set of stairs guarded at the top by to female sphinx, this led into a little courtyard where you could also access the street. We had spent about 2 hours exploring this area and it was now time to move on, after all I must have snapped at least a dozen portraits of the intriguing doors of the area!!

This doorway led through to the Hotel Sully

This is what greeted us as we stepped through the doorway

A corner of the garden in the Hotel Sully

Through a small passage in the building and this carved door led out to another section of the hotel.

One of two sphinx who guarded the stairs that led down into this second court yard of the Hotel Sully

The buildings were adorned with statues.

We used our return ticket to take us back as far as Châtelet, within a short walk to our friendly internet café for our daily check with home. Then a quick lunch at a sandwich bar in Les Halles shopping centre and we hit the Metro again, this time bound for The Arc de Triomphe.

Boarding the train at Les Halles, we travelled one stop to Châtelet and changed for Charles De Gaulle/Etoile.  As soon as you reach the top of the stairs from the Metro the Arc de Triomphe looms overhead, another jaw dropping moment. It is sat in the middle of a rond –point in the centre of a 12 road intersection, it is HUGE, the intersection, that is. The Arc itself is also a mighty big structure. There were people underneath it and we couldn’t work out how you would get to it, as the traffic circles it non-stop from one road or another and it would be absolute suicide to mess with these guys. We crossed one of the roads before it entered the rond-point and there was a sign that indicated a set of stairs that takes you under the road to the other side. Half way across this underground passage is the entrance to the Arc de Triomphe and the queues waiting to get in. You can access the Arc via the 284 steps to the top or, there is an elevator up, but you still have to walk the last 40 steps to the observation point, 150 feet above ground level, at the top. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen! We followed the tunnel to the other side of the rond-point for more  photos, then made our way back to the Metro for our next venture, The Tour Eiffel or as we call it the Eye Full Tower.

The Arc de Triumph looms large and is continuously surounded by traffic from the roads that feed into it.

The  statue  groups on the front and back of the Arc are huge. 

We are becoming a dab hand at navigating the Metro and can even use the ticket buying machine successfully, without causing a queue to form behind us. By the end of this day we were not even bothering to set the machine to the English version!!! Five Metro stops from Etoile to Bir-Hakeim and we were at the Eiffel Tower. The train leaves the underground just after Passy and crosses the Seine River where it looks like the river is divided and in fact it is, by a man made structure called the Allée  De Cygnes, at one end of this is the Statue de la Liberté (1886) a smaller version of America’s famous Lady. The station here is elevated and you have to descend to ground level to leave it.

We had just rounded a curve in the street and there it was!

It is difficult to fit the whole structure in one photo frame

The curved legs of the Eiffel Tower are unmistakable

Like so many other sights in Paris, the tower is not immediately visible. You follow the signs and the crowds along the street and round a bend and there it is towering above the rooftops ahead. Along the path to the tower there were vendors every few feet flogging everything Eiffel, from multi-coloured key rings and metal towers from key ring size to about two foot tall and towers embedded in glass to flashing light towers. The merchandise and prices were the same with every seller. Some sellers were quite aggressive others looked a little embarrassed by it all. Most appeared to be immigrants of either Indian or African descent, all were men, between about 16 and late 30’s.

As we approached the tower we noticed a very obvious police presence, there were a lot of people and the crowd was getting larger by the minute despite the cold and the fact that it was late afternoon. The gardens down below the tower were also starting to fill with people and it suddenly hit us that the crowds were gathering to celebrate New Year’s Eve. While Michael queued at the only working self-cleaning toilet we have found in Paris,(there are a few around but most don’t work!!) I headed across the road to see if I could get a shot of the tower and fit it all in the frame, I couldn’t! There was a little carnival on the corner here with a carousel and some carnival statues.

Michael queued for the self cleaning toilets, it was one of the first we'd seen that actually worked!!!!

even from across the wide boulevard this was as much of the tower that I could fit into one shot!

One of the carnival statues, with the medieaval tent structures visible across the river, at thbottom centre of the photo.

the other carnival statue beside the carousel

 It also looked like a medieval tent city was set up across the river. By the time I got back Michael was just leaving the toilet. We had a look around and decided to head for home before the crowds got too big to navigate. Walking back past the vendors, there was a sort of slight ripple. I noticed a couple of the sellers starting to gather the fabric they had their merchandise on, they were bundling it up very quickly, tossing pieces to the centre as they went. Ah I thought, these blokes shouldn’t be here! Then the ripple broke into a panic and traders scattered in all directions  as a police car reversed at full speed past us just about taking out a couple of the fleeing villains, who, en masse had bundled their wares and dashed across the busy boulevard paying no heed to the traffic that was whizzing by. I don’t know how nobody was killed! Once on the other side they stopped fleeing to check where the gendarmes were. They looked just like Meercats stretching their necks to see their pursuers. I don’t know how they could escape as the other side of the road was the River Seine separated from the road by a short wall topped by a dense hedge, and this is where the escapees were perched, spread out along the bushes. They must have spotted more police as all of a sudden they disappeared. It was full on entertainment for the crowds as we all stopped to watch. I reckon the vendors would all be back amongst the legitimate stall holders once the police presence got busy with the crowds.

The vendors dashed across this road dodging the traffic and made for the hedge topped wall on the other side of the road.

Apartment buildings behind this wall are on the other side of the river.

Back in our own neighbourhood, our nightly shopping spree for provisions had to last us two days as the shops are closed on New Years Day. We decide to buy some nice cakes to celebrate the end of 2010. We also had our first foray into a Boucherie, buying some very nice sausages and some potted meat (Jambon ???) and some vegies. We also bought some quiches for dinner tomorrow night. So ends 2010, in our little Paris flat, which it seems is located right in the very centre of Paris, walking distance to almost everything. How lucky we have been.

Some of the tasty potted meat we bought on the way home.

Dinner: sausages, mushrooms, broccoli carrots and potatoes.

We also had cakes for desert!!!!