Sweet Escape: Paris Day Three

It’s Wednesday. Having learnt not to trust the weather forecast, we decided to put on layers of clothes complete with our thick coat.

Today’s plan was to visit Louvre and Champs Elysees. We went to Louvre late morning and thankfully, the queue was not too long. Upon entering Louvre Museum through the glass pyramid main entrance, one’s bag needs to be screened for security reason. We paid a fee to enter Louvre’s Main Museum. There were a few other museums within Louvre with special exhibitions, but we didn’t plan to go for it. Soon, we were inside Louvre’s Museum. We started walking through the hall displaying Greek sculptures. There were abundant of them. All sculpted in marble white stones. Out of all, I only recognized Zeus, having recently watched Percy Jackson, The Lightning Thieve and The Clash of Titans. There were other interesting sculptures as well, most of them almost naked.

Throngs of people around; locals, tourists, and school children on their field trip.

We entered a series of hall. This time there were abundant of oil paintings. About hundreds of them all displayed against each four corners of the wall, hall after hall. We were initially awed by the first few paintings, the intricate manner in which it was painted centuries ago, but soon after, there were just too many of them that it’s hard to pinpoint the significance of one’s painting over the other. It didn’t help that every description of every displays, be it sculptures, paintings or crafts were all in French.

We walked through the hall, passing many more paintings until we came to hall and saw at the far end of the wall, above hundreds of heads and cameras, the original Monalisa Painting.

After having seen Monalisa painting, we felt that our mission in Louvre was accomplished and so we made our way out. This time we were heading to Champs de Elysees, known as one of the most expensive avenues in the world. We stopped by a café settled within the park and ordered brunch; coffee and baguette/sandwich.

Champs Elysees Avenue has lines of high end fashion boutiques, expensive restaurants and cafes, cinemas and theatres, and other commercial stores on both sides. On both end of the avenue are Cleopatra’s Needle and Arc de Triumph.

A group of youngsters were entertaining the crowd with their smooth dance moves.

Arc de Triumph is this gigantic arc in the middle of a huge roundabout. Again, like other attractions in Paris, it was crowded with locals and tourists admiring it, taking pictures of and with it and harassing it. No, just kidding.

Anyways, after taking pictures of Arc de Triumph, we had our early dinner in Pizza Pino, an Italian restaurant. I ordered Pepperoni Pizza with a sunny side up and Oliver ordered some pasta with Shrimps. Both were delicious. The service was good. Waiters were friendly. I had the feeling that the waiters treated us good because they thought we were like food inspectors. When Oliver took out his DSLR, the waiters were looking at us taking photo of the food. They even called their manager on duty and probably told him that we were food inspectors. They kept coming to our tables to ask us if the food were good, they gave us Chill Oil when we didn’t ask for it and so on.

After dinner, we took a leisurely stroll at the southern side of the avenue. Here, one can enjoy the sight of beautifully arranged gardens with fountains and some grand buildings including Grand and Petit (Petite) Palais (Palace). Both were huge in regardless. We walked across a broad sturdy bridge with beams at both end of the bridge and gold plated statues of a horse at the tip, passed through buildings of nice and expensive looking apartments (I wonder how much it costs to stay in one), and continued walking.

Petite Palace

Grand Palace

We came back to Louvre glass pyramid, looking at it one last time.

As sun began setting, I look at Paris. I’m not sure if I’ll ever visit Paris again.

Oliver is visiting it again in June with two friends. I’ll definitely miss Paris. Those brief time spent in Paris was memorable. Our last night in Paris, we met a friend of mine, local Parisian, a couchsurfer I hosted a couple of months back. We chatted the night away over beers and cocktail.

That’s how we spent our last night in Paris.

The next day, we got up to walk the street of Paris one last time. We had coffee and croissants for breakfast at Starbucks. Soon after, checked out and head to the train station, back to Kaiserslautern, Germany.

That marks the end of our Paris trip together.

Sweet Escape: Paris Day Two

Day two, after light breakfast of orange juice and some sponge cakes we bought from the supermarket the day earlier, we made our way to Louvre. Louvre was just 15 minutes walking distance from Chatelet. Now, Louvre was huge. Located at the heart of Paris and originally a royal palace built in 12th century, it became a public museum at the end of 18th century.

One of the prominent features in Louvre is its glass pyramid which was actually a recent addition built only in 1989. The glass pyramid is also the entrance to the Louvre Museum which houses over 35,000 objects where a large part of the collection consists of European paintings and sculptures and most notably, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Monalisa painting. Unfortunately for us, Louvre Museum was closed on that day. (It closes every Tuesday). So we decided to walk to Eiffel Tower.

The walk to Eiffel Tower was both delightful and unpleasant. Delightful because we had coffee and chocolate macaroon on our way (Finally, I tasted macaroon! I decided it was too sweet for my liking).

The broad walkway from Louvre was sandwiched in between two huge stretch of parks with neatly trimmed bushes, manicured green lawn and neatly positioned trees as well as wooden benches all around, if only…(I’ll tell you later), people watching was fun, I like watching people without being so obvious. I’ll go ‘Oh he’s cute’, ‘Oh she’s pretty’, ‘Awww, the two look so sweet’, ‘I wish my children would be as cute as them’ etc. In the middle of the broad walkway was also a round lake with green steel chairs arranged around it for people to just sit and relax.

Anyways, the unpleasant part of it was the weather. Despite the weather forecasted the day to be sunny, it was windy and boy was the wind cold. It chilled you right to the bones. Had the weather been nice, I would love to have picnic at the park or sit around the lake. Boo to the weather. It was supposed to be spring! And remember I told you about the Middle Eastern women who begged for money, well apparently they are known as gypsies and it’s not only in Paris but all over UK. Along the way, we met like 3 more of them before we learn how to avoid them when we spot them from afar. Another incident which was quite funny in a way was, on our way to Eiffel Tower, right after we crossed a bridge, we were walking when all of a sudden a guy walking from the opposite direction picked up something from the ground and as he held the thing up, it was a gold ring. Well, at least it looked like a gold ring. The guy exclaimed, “Oh, a ring. Someone must have dropped it. I guess I’m lucky.’ We smiled at the guy. The guy called us. “Excuse me, would you like to have the ring? I’m lucky. So, I want to bless you with my luck”. We declined politely but he insisted. So, we accepted it and thanked him and continued to walk. The guy called us again, “Excuse me, can you give me some money for lunch?” And that’s when we knew the whole thing with the ring and the luck and the so called blessing us with it was all scam. At first we told him, “Oh, we don’t have much money. We need the money too.” The guy pleaded, “Please, just a little” and so we gave him a few euro cents and we parted way. At that point, I didn’t know whether to laugh or feel annoyed. But hey, it’s the experience that counts, right? Yeah right.

A couple of minutes and we were standing just a hundred meters away from Eiffel Tower. Now, I really feel that I’m in Paris. They say you have not been to Paris unless you've seen the Eiffel Tower. Standing majestically at 984 ft, Eiffel Tower was built in the late 18th Centuries. It is one of the most recognizable standing structures in the world. We took pictures of it and with it from afar and near. We queued up along with hundreds of people all over the world just to see Paris from Eiffel Tower. I guess we were lucky we only queued up for half an hour because I heard on better days; people would queue up for hours to get tickets to walk up Eiffel Tower. So we got our tickets and off we went and walked up the flights of stairs to the 1st Floor of Eiffel. That alone was quite high up. On the 1st floor, we enjoyed the bird eye view of Paris and decided to have another coffee break and we had croissants to accompany with it. They say that Paris makes the best croissants. So, if you come to Paris, try the croissants at least once, especially Chocolate croissants. I miss them!

After Eiffel Tower, we continued walking and all the while still glancing back at Eiffel Tower and taking pictures of it from various angles. Lots of pictures to prove it.

We saw Champs de Elysees from afar but decided to keep it for the next day. We continued walking side by side, hand in hand and along the way saw many things that was quintessentially Paris; quite charming really. We talked, bickered, laughed, teased and took many more pictures whenever we saw something that captivated us. A whole lot more things that were not photographed simply because sometimes, it is best to just be fully in the moment, that’s when you can appreciate not only the tangible things but the intangible things as well. I think that is why Paris is romantic in a way .The city is so beautiful that you can’t help but feel grateful, blessed, peace and loved. Enchanted. Maybe. We had dinner at an inexpensive joint where they had pastas and pizzas. The food was filling but not fulfilling. But the company was priceless.

Another day in Paris. Another day with each other. We are blessed.