Can’t Speak French

Paris - Easter 2013

I’d wanted to come back to Paris for some time. I was last there in around 92 or 93 with my Dad, not long after the Tunnel opened. I remember eating lumps of sugar for breakfast every morning, and there were mushrooms growing on our hotel room skirting board.

My companion had already been twice, perhaps three times, but has no memory of anything in particular, so was happy to go with me again. It was my first journey from St Pancras and on the HS1 line, which went from the city to the tunnel in less than 30 minutes. This is how rail travel is meant to be, not stuck behind years of delayed consultations and obstructors to progress.

We arrived around the time of year when the clocks go forward, so having another hour jump forward seemed to be more baffling to my mind than a larger time shift would have been. Dazed and moderated exhausted, we dumped our stuff at our hotel and set off to see whatever we could cram into our first evening. This ended up being the Pompidou centre and Notre Dame (the outside of each, anyway). Little did I realise that I look at a photo of Notre Dame on our fridge every day. We had one of our better meals at a chain restaurant that offered three courses of deliciousness and a glass of red for a reasonable amount of euros. Set menus seemed to be all the rage here, and certainly made our job easier.

As the song goes, I can’t speak French. At school our year was split into two, half started with French, the other German. I was on the German half. Then in Year 9 the top set of each half got to do the other language for a year. So I had one year of two lessons a week. It didn’t stick. I struggle enough with German and I learnt that for five years. So once again I relied on the international language of pointing at things and looking confused when someone reeled off a load of local talk at me.

On Saturday morning we attempted to visit the catacombs. However as it was the Easter weekend in one of the most popular tourist cities in the world, one or two others did too. The queues were ridiculous, so we went to spend the day at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, which I have another strong memory from visiting before. Back then they had a mini TV studio that you could control every aspect of, and an underground botanical garden that was meant to represent some Jurassic wonderland. This time around there was a planetarium that was so soothing I had to fight to stay awake.

Sunday was more eventful. In the morning there was a bomb scare at the tower, more on that later. We started with a walk around Anvers to find the Café des 2 Moulins, where Amélie was filmed. It was heaving with customers but we managed to grab a table and eat what was probably the best meal we had there. Gorgeous waiter too. As we were paying customers I didn’t feel too bad taking the odd photo, but people were just walking in off the street, snapping a picture and walking out again. Bit cheeky, I thought. And the books say this place has finally fallen off the main tourist trail, god knows what it was like at its peak. My other memory of the place was the power cutting out every 15 minutes, but they still put on a mighty quick & decent service despite the crowds.

Walking around the centre of Paris was eerie, it was like a deserted city in some places. We walked a massive route that took in various parks and landmarks. The entrance to the Louvre was insane. Why anyone would want to spend hours in a queue to then spend a few seconds near a painting is beyond me.

We made it to the Eiffel tower to find it still cordoned off after the earlier bomb scare, with machine gun wielding police patrolling the grounds. Then we made for the Grande Arche de la Défense - another landmark I stare blankly at on our fridge every morning - for a walk around its modern Docklands-esque architecture.

Getting back to the tower in the evening was one of those real planets aligning moments. There was only one entrance open (one was under maintenance and two more were still shut following the scare) so you can imagine the size of the queue for that one leg. I got a hot chocolate and we contemplated heading across the way to get a view of the tower’s hourly light show. Then the leg nearest us re-opened, and we ran to the front of the queue. We were probably up and back down again in the same time some losers were still queueing. Ha!

It wasn’t until we got around halfway up that I remembered I am terrible with heights. There was a slight breeze, but my paranoia made it feel gale force. Every time I took my camera out of my pocket I envisioned it tumbling over the edge, and me with it. Very calming. Still, it was one of those things you have to experience at one stage or the other. The hourly sparkling lights display looked amazing up close, but they looked even better an hour later when we viewed them from afar, combined with the fountain show. It was quite a spectacular sight.

Our train back wasn’t until Monday afternoon, so we had time for one last walk. We started along an abandoned railway viaduct that had been transformed into an urban park and walkway. We were constantly dodging joggers. We ended up at the Père Lachaise cemetery. And I had to admit to feeling a combination of underwhelmed and unease. This was a tourist spot that was also somewhere people come to genuine express loss for their loved ones. I felt like none of us outsiders really had any right being there.

One last lunch, and then back to Gare du Nord and the grubby holding pen they cram you in which just pales in comparison to St Pancras. A fine weekend.