Monday, September 29th

Arrived in Paris after a very smooth flight. The only strange thing was, that when we landing, it was so foggy that you couldn’t see the ground. It actually felt more like we hit something, than landing; and only when the other wheels hit and the engines kicked into reverse, was it clear we weren’t flying anymore.

Unlike most of my trips (and Grant will attest to this!) I did not go barreling out into the day, but decided to have a nap right away. The hotel is in the 5th Arrondissement, the immediate neighbourhood is les Gobelins, named after a family of the area who makes fabrics and wall-papers. The factory is close by and has tours daily, so I may go and take a look tomorrow. Like the hotels on my last trip to France, this one has a beautiful view of the air-shaft, although the walls of the air-shaft this time are not painted sky-blue with clouds, unfortunately. The room is unique, though, in that it is pie-shaped. The narrow point end of the pie is about three feet wide – the width of the window. The rest of the room is small, but clean and bright, and the bed (obviously, from the nap-time) is comfy.

I napped longer than I intended (I should’ve slept more on the flight, but I got hooked into the Iron Man movie –which wasn’t that good!). Set out to walk around the city and just enjoy the sunshine and the ambience. It took me all over, with a walk near the Pantheon (remember Foucault’s pendulum there?), down into Boulevard St. Michel, across to the Cite, and a bit of time in Notre Dame and the gardens there. On the way I picked up the Parisien street meat – crepes to go. It was amazingly good!

I then decided, rather foolishly to walk up to the Gare d’Est. It’s where I need to catch the train to Strasbourg on Wednesday, and I thought I might as well explore the area along the way. Well, it was a bit of a foolish idea, since it was much farther than I expected. Nevertheless, it was a fascinating walk. I diverged from the main street to one street over – Faubourg de St. Denis – which is very ethnically diverse, with lots of C. aribbean, Turkish, and African shops and restaurants. And lots of hookers! I was pretty naïve at first, until I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of over-dressed women just standing about. Some is rather extravagant outfits. Big hats and big hair and big boobs. And, it was only about 4:30 in the afternoon.

The visit to Gare d’Est was a total waste of time. After attempting to book my seat about a dozen times on the automatic machines and it refusing my credit card (which, in itself was starting to make me panic!), I finally read the small notice that it only accepted credit cards with ‘chips’ in them, and not the typical north-american card with a magnetic strip. So, off to the real ticket office, where there was a queue about thirty people long. Not ideal.

I abandoned the ticket office, thinking I’ll get the tickets later (having quelled my panic over the cards not working), and walked down through the Marais back toward the city, where I picked up a sandwich and a drink before heading into the Church of St. Ephraim for a music concert.

There is so much music here, being held in old churches, that you can hear something every night. It’s not particularly cheap – 23 euros – but it was good. It was a solo for a selection of Bach pieces for cello. The church was really small, so the acoustics were amazing. It was almost too loud, and I was sitting about five rows back. There was only about 25 people there, and the whole space would only seat about 75, so it was a bit like a private concert.


It’s late, I’m bagged, and the I can’t send this tonight because the hotels’ wifi is down. I’ll sent it early on Tuesday.