The First Day in Paris

Introduction

     Our trip to France and Barcelona was wonderful and went off without a hitch; amazing for the multitude of things that could have gone wrong on such an undertaking that involved taxis, trains, buses, planes, subways, a rental car, and our own feet. There were seven destinations of consequence, not including six hours at the Shanghai Airport and two hours at the Beijing Airport: Paris, Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence, Monaco, Nice, Uzes, and Barcelona. Each destination has its everlasting flavors and memories in points of interest we visited and the excellent restaurants in which we ate. We slept nine nights in four cities at five different hotels, each with its romance and quirks.

 Remarkably, despite our full schedule, because I planned for it well, I can speak for Leona and myself: we never felt hurried. Only at a few junctures did we feel lost, mostly because the Jaguar's GPS was a challenge to follow with directions in French, distance measured in meters and kilometers, and roads with detours. The most challenging city to negotiate was Marseilles with a highway entrance closed one night and an access road to the hotel under construction another night. I made two brief wrong turns, one approaching the Basse Corniche (Low Coast) Road – Highway 98 between Monaco and Nice, and another approaching Marseilles from the west. The first night’s drive from Marseilles to Aix-en-Provence was  a challenge for Leona who had to keep scrolling the map down to keep the route in view. Miraculously, we found the hotel in the end. 

This photo essay of our trip cannot convey the exhilaration we experienced every day, but it tells the story of our enjoyment, mostly in chronological order. 

     On the twelve hour Air China (not to be confused with China Airlines from Taiwan) flight from Shanghai to Paris, this man standing continually changed seats to open five overhead bins he claimed for himself, sometimes removing a sports jacket  sometimes just looking in. The passengers ignored him but not Leona who clued me in to his strange behavior; I had thought he was a flight attendant until she pointed out his erratic behavior. 

     When the landing procedure was announced and we were told to straighten our seats and fasten our seat belts, this man stood up with two cans of aerosol spray (see can in his hands), and commenced to walking up and down the fuselage spraying into the air vents over the overhead compartments; no one stopped him but put masks on their faces. I took his picture and he leered at me. In Mandarin, he told me not to photograph him. We had a fifteen second stand-off. Later, when I alerted the head flight attendant, she made short shrift of him. When I asked if he worked for the airline she said he did. When I asked where his ID badge was she was silent.

      Because of the lack of security, airplane condition, and harassment in China towards passengers from Taiwan, we will not fly this airline or transit through China again.  

The Hotel Eden Opera is in a gentrified red light district of Paris which now sports a lot of trendy youthful clubs. The Bd. Hausmann shopping district and Larnier Opera House are within walking distance and the #67 bus terminal up the road at the half moon, can be taken to the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, and a slew of other wonderful places in the Latin Quarter, as you can see below:  

The elevator fits two people, at most.  A tiny lobby and private patio would be nothing without helpful desk clerk, Simon, bilingual and down to earth. A small restaurant in front is a good place to start the day.

The #67 bus passes by the Louvre Museum but we didn't get off to look; we had been there for two days marching around in 2000 and had other plans for the day.

Another back angle of The Louvre

The focus is not the church, but the cars parked at the electric  curbside car battery recharging posts.
You plug your car in and you're good to go.

Along the River Seine, used book stalls are open for blocks along the banks. Of course, all the books are in French.

Notre Dame Cathedral  from the back. We stopped in a cafe for crapes and cappuccino, then, we walked around the beautiful cathedral without bothering to go inside; we had seen inside it in 2000; it's a church inside but a building outside.  

This Pont des Arts bridge and others across The Seine, are famous for lovers attaching their locks to the grates along the sides, however, the weight of the thousands of locks was making the bridge sink; they had to remove them. The locks on one side of this bridge had been removed. 

Recueil d'estampes coloriees de Nicolas Huet: vue, La Serre temperee
Vue du Jardin des Plantes a Paris  doesn't look like it did in 1805, but the building are still there. We walked through on our route from Notre Dame Cathedral to the Latin Quarter and stopped in Museum National D'Hist. Many families, on that dreary drizzling Saturday, were there to debunk creation theory. I was there to use the restroom.

Recueil d'estampes coloriees de Nicolas Huet:  vue, Le Cabinet d'histoire naturelle

Recueil d'estampes coloriees de Nicolas Huet: vue, LAmphitheatre

We indulged for a few days on cheese from this shop Simon from Hotel Eden L'Opera recommended. It is on Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire near the Natural History Museum and a block away from...

Le Mosquee, the entrance into the restaurant and cafe where sweets like baklava were for sale with mint tea in little glasses, two Euros each. 

"Leona said , "How can you eat those sweets? They're
 too sweet!" Tout de suite, I replied, "Not as sweet as you." 

After leaving La Mosquee, we passed Paris-Sorbonne University, which was established after the cultural revolution of May 1968,  and this cheese shop, to reach Boulevard Saint Germain for our dinner reservation.  

A taxidermy curio shop near Chez Rene, the restaurant where we had dinner. My dinner, veal head and tongue, could have come straight from the shop before they added formaldehyde. You will notice that we took no photos of dishes in restaurants; only an occasional photo of us sitting at tables. We were adamant about enjoying our food in the moment and not creating a scene disturbing other diners.