Paris: The City of Light

A week after I arrived back in Europe after a 2 week vacation in the United States, I hopped on a few trains down to Paris for the weekend.  A friend I met during my freshman year of university was studying in London and then spending a week in Paris with her extended family and invited me to come along! This would be my second time in Paris as two years earlier I went on a trip to Berlin and Paris, which unfortunately ended with both members of the party getting sick then stuck in Paris due to small amount of snow and eventually leading to buying a whole new plane ticket home.  I was hoping that this time around would be a different experience and it definitely was!!

On my first visit out, I was able to see the Louvre, the Orangerie, part of Champs-Elysses, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and eat at various restaurants.  This time around I did not really have too many preferences of what I saw, I was happy that I was not sick this time around!  I had decided that I would only take the fast international train from the Netherlands to Paris (Thalys) only on the return journey for two reasons: (1) 34 Euro seat reservation despite having a Eurail Pass (for comparison the most I have ever paid for a seat reservation was 2 Euros for the Deutsche Bahn) (2) There were no more seats available that are set aside for those with a Eurail pass so I had no choice.

Saturday morning I decided to start my 6 hour journey taking local trains starting at 9 am.  As luck would have it, NS (the Netherlands train system) was have problems due to some signal problems and I had to first travel north to Schiphol before traveling south towards Antwerp.  On my journey day I did have to make one seat reservation for the train from Lille to Paris and by traveling to Schiphol, I would get in an hour later….so tried to make a new reservation at Schiphol for a train leaving Lille an hour later and the lady at the service desk was so unhelpful, sheesh. I decided to try my luck at Antwerp.

 When I arrived at Antwerp, I discovered I was at track 22 and needed to get to track 1 for my next train leaving 50 minutes later, except….I couldn’t find it at first and then I looked up. In this city they decided to stack all the railroad tracks in three/four levels instead of spreading them out on one level.  One had to climb these long stairs or escalators.  It was actually an impressive sight to see and once you reached the main level you could see remnants of the older train station.  I located where track 1 was and then went to the service desk to have a second attempt at making a seat reservation for the last train to Paris…and success! The man at the desk was really nice said that it was no problem at all!  I have no idea why Schiphol they said nothing was available…perhaps since it was the day of, I had a Eurail pass and she didn’t fill like checking?

So two trains later (Antwerp to Lille and Lille to Paris Nord) I arrived an hour later than anticipated but in time to meet up with my firend, Pisei, who took the train from London, and her family.  Pisei’s parents, aunts and uncles were originally from Cambodia but most, if not all, had left and immigrated to Australia, France or Maryland, USA.  This was the first time in a long time that she had been back in France to see her family there so it was really nice of them to let me stay for two days with them as well. 

As Pisei’s aunt (and her family), who we were staying with, lives in a suburb outside of Paris, they had driven in to pick us up.  They decided to drive around Paris for a bit so we could see some of the sites, like drive around the Arc de Triumph (gosh that is a nightmare of a circle…and in America people freak out when they see all the circles in Washington, DC….hehe) and drive past the Eiffel Tower.  It was then decided we should take pictures by the Eiffel Tower.  This was nice because I had only seen it during the daytime and at this point it was evening and one could see the twinkling lights they had installed on the tower, which go on every once in awhile for 5 minutes or so.  Pisei’s aunt took lots of pictures of all of us, which was really kind of her to do, felt like I was at a mini photo shoot.

As Pisei and I were quite hungry, we decided it was a good idea to go for dinner somewhere. Pisei’s aunt and uncle dropped Pisei, her cousin and I off near a restaurant where we met up with her other cousin as well as one of the cousin’s boyfriends.  We found a nice place to eat and all had French Onion Soup, then Crème Bulee and a bread & cheese platter.  I was extremely stuffed by the end of that meal, but we all had a good time talking with my non-existent French, Pisei’s rusty French and the cousins’ pretty good understanding of English.  The boyfriend then drove us all back to the aunt’s house, where I promptly fell asleep.

Sunday, Pisei, her younger cousin and I explored parts of Paris all day.  We were dropped off by Montmatre, where we climbed up the hill and enjoyed a glorious view of the city.  As it was January, Paris was not super crowded with tourists, which is really nice, except the sun looks so deceivingly warm, you are almost surprised at how chilly it can be outside.  We explored the surrounding neighborhood for a bit and stopped for lunch at a Creperie, yum is all I can say!! 

Thinking about all this food makes me so hungry as I am typing this up two months later on 6 hour train ride to Berlin and I have not eaten since 6 am and it is 11 am….maybe I should have my apple now…only 2.5 hours to go!

Anyways, after the Creperie we traveled to the Cite Island, where I had wanted to see the famous stained glass windows of Sainte Chapelle.  In January 2009 they had been under construction and surprise surprise, they were still under construction! If I remember correctly though, within the next year or so they should be finished and then I can finally see them! (already decided I will be going to Paris a few more times at least).   Since that was a failure, we moved on to Champ-Elysses and walked to the Arc de Triumph and back.  Along the way we went to Ladure, which had a really short line, yay!  This is the famous patisserie and there are 4 locations within Paris.  Of course we went in to buy some of the famous macaroons.  I picked out four types – vanilla, blackberry, I forget, and rose – my favourite flavour ever!!

We then ended the evening by going to the Discovery Musuem, which turned out ok.  A lot of the exhibits are fairly outdated, but the one of light I thought fairly interesting.  They also had a temporary exhibit about hair so got to see my hair underneath the microscope and confirm that it was indeed straight with no hint of curliness. 

That evening, we enjoyed a fantastic dinner at Pisei’s aunt’s house.  Again I was so stuffed at the end of the night.  I tried foie gras for the first time and it was actually really good!  We also enjoyed some raclette, which is a type of cheese that is first melted (there are various ways of melting this) and in our case eaten with small potatoes. 

Monday morning we took the train into Paris, the younger cousin went to school while Pisei, her aunt and I went to another museum – this time the Grand Gallery of Evolution (part of the Museum of Natural History).  I really enjoyed this one and a nice plus was that it looked like it was recently updated.  


The exhibits were roughly divided by climates/region and had tons of old-fashioned taxidermy.  There was also an exhibit on endangered and extinct animals, so got to see what the Dodo bird looked liked.

Throughout the museum there were benches with information tablets in English, French, German and Spanish where you could get more information about certain species or topics, like bats, the development of wings and climate change.  On the topmost level were exhibits on man and technology and what to do for the future of animals.

 

For lunch we stopped off a what appeared to a popular bakery for some sandwiches.  I tried to pay for Pisei’s aunt’s meal as a thank you for her wonderful hospitality, but miserably failed….honestly their family was really nice and even invited me to come back and stay with them, which they definitely did not have to do at all!  Around 2 pm I  went to the Gare du Nord for the Thalys train back to the Netherlands.  This time around there were no problems and it took half the time.  The only thing I was confused about was the amount of empty seats as when I had made the reservation, the service desk in Utrecht told me that this was the first available train back on that Monday…I guess they really offer a limited amount of seats for Eurail passes, oh well, good thing to remember for next time!

I hoping to go back to Paris at some point in May/June either with friends or to meet up with friends from home.  This city has so much to offer and I really would like to explore it some more.  Now having been twice in the winter, I do look forward to seeing Paris in the warmer months and go to Disneyland Paris and Versailles!