Paris: part 1

Well time surely does fly. It feels like I just finished blogging about Milan but that was already two weeks ago. And now there's more to yak about. We spent Easter weekend in Paris, five glorious days of clear blue sky and mid-20s temperatures. And just so you know, it's been like that here in Geneva ever since. Maybe I'm just not summer-acclimatized yet but it's getting distractingly warm while I work during the day, and opening the window at night hardly delivers the expected cool breeze. But while I long for summer to be over, I expect you all to fully enjoy your snowstorms and near-zero temperatures. Heehee.

So... Paris. Very nice city (probably helped that the weather was nice). Carrie had been there before with her sister Michelle, but the city left a better impression this time around. Comparing to the recent Milan visit, we definitely noticed how much easier it is when you know a bit of the local language. Paris is pretty 'big': whereas the GTA (Toronto's metropolitan area) has 5 million people, the urban area around Paris has 10 million in half the area.

I love stats, as some may have noticed while reading our blog. Well, perhaps that's all the statistics I'm going to offer about Paris. Perhaps from here on I'll merely dazzle the readers with wonderful photos of our adventures in the City of Light. Aaaand perhaps not. We'll see.

Carrie found lodging for us by bidding at Priceline.com for hotels in the area (you offer some amount for a number of nights, and they either accept or reject your offer). We lucked out and ended up staying at the Marriott for most of our stay. It was in a very quiet neighbourhood, and less than a 10 minute walk to the subway. Perfect location!

First stop: the Avenue des Champs Élysées of course. A wide street with wider sidewalks and crazy traffic circles... what a zoo. So what brighter move than to pause in the middle of the street for a nice pic of the Arc de Triomphe? We didn't climb up the monument since it costs money and, well, if you're going to pay to climb you may as well find something higher.



We wandered on and came to the Notre Dame cathedral. A nice structure but the Duomo in Milan was fresh in our minds so the front of this cathedral didn't blow us away. You could climb up this one too, but... the time wasn't right. We looked around inside and saw the massive (and apparently renowned) round windows; as is to be expected from interior pics of cathedrals, the photo I took isn't great (well, why blame myself??).



I must say that the picture taken outside from the back of the cathedral is much more spectacular, more for the scenery than the building itself:



At some point in our visit we made our way to Montmartre, a hill that is one of the highest points in the city. Atop it is the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur, a landmark that can seen from many parts of the city. The area sports quite an artistic community, with Picasso, Monet and others having worked there. Nowadays it is crawling with street artists, hoping to paint someone's portrait or a landscape. As a wise man must surely have once said, "One tourist's pain in the neck is another's delight." While we didn't mind admiring their work, as tourists we were their prey so we couldn't walk through the area without being approached numerous times. Anyway, the basilica was worth the hike up the hill to see up close and enter but not itself worth climbing (or so we assumed).



Nearby a mime or something was standing at the side of the road. Most people didn't realize it was a person, it was very white and stood very very still. Aren't mimes supposed to try to find their way out of glass boxes or something?