Paris Trip

Went to Paris recently, here's a diary/thought process...

Day One - Eurostar-tastic
We arrive in the impressive St Pancras station, recently renovated and added to in order to make the Eurostar experience a bit more pleasant, I suppose. It's lost a lot of character, and as we passed through passport control I became vaguely aware that it seemed wrong to have given over a small part of it to France, for that is indeed what appears to have happened. The method of travel, though, is undoubtedly more civilised than air travel, and for once I did not feel out of place jotting notes in my Moleskine diary.
Through the tunnel and into France, and I am immediately struck by how similar the countryside appears to that which we have just left. This should not come as a shock - after all, the two countries were joined until relatively recently by a land bridge across the channel - but I suppose I had simply not stopped to consider the likelihood of the similarity before. Which makes it all the more ironic that as countries we hate each other so. I will leave out some of my opinions of the French here for the sake of both expediency and my future snowboarding holidays, but they range far and wide in my scribbled notes.
Through all this enmity, the train drifts along, at once both British and French, like a land-borne Concorde without quite the same degree of romance. Efficiency and cleanliness are its peak virtues, neither of which mark the train out as a mode of transport which one can desire.
For the briefest of moments I struggle with the idea of planning our days, or at least looking at something to do in Paris, but then, exhausted by the possibilities and the scale of the task, I quit in despair. I am no planner, this much is certain, and I throw the book aside. Reading has lost its edge also, so I reflect as the countryside flashes by, noting down some of my ideas, leaving the rest to my brain to file, which is stupid because the only thing worse than my memory is my handwriting.
Our room at the hotel is rather like the Eurostar - clean, efficient and lacking somewhat in leg-room. Nevertheless, it will more than suffice for the next few days. A perspex chair sits awkwardly in the corner (we will discover later that it is after a Phillipe Starck original), see-through, says Jen, because it makes the room look bigger.
The final act of our first few hours in Paris is to commit a terrible faux-pas in a local restaurant by not ordering cous-cous. The waiter, offended, brings us our varied meat dishes, and then withdraws, only returning some years later to provide the bill. Perhaps I should have apologised...

Day Two - 'Une carnet, s'il vous plait.'
Morning of the second day allows me to finally ask for a carnet, having wondered for some years whether my French lessons were correct in their assessment that it would be the single most useful phrase I would ever learn. It comes a close second, but I won't reveal which wins. We take the light purple Metro line across town, though simply choosing which line you wish to take is a job in itself, the Metro being a strangely convoluted system comprising four thousand individual lines. Seriously.
In the Pompidou centre, we wander and wonder at the art of Alberto Giacometti, and both come away with the impression that neither of us really 'gets' modern art. This was after our brief flirtation with a flea market (they sell tat and silver spoons), and the first occasion I have ever used my broken French to ask for a pain au chocolat and a croissant in a proper boulangerie.
At this point, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Paris is a city of condom machines. Whereas in the UK contraceptives of the latex kind are usually supplied only in chemists and pub toilets, in Paris they are on every other street corner, and usually in Metro stations, too, right alongside the automatic ticket machines. Just thought you might like to know.
In the evening, we scale the Eiffel Tower by night. Paris is laid out below us, a spectacular city of shimmering lights, bisected by the dark ribbon of the wandering Seine. I doubt London ever looked this attractive, though I also doubt London was ever as full of pedlars of shiny metal Eiffel Towers, cast in the cheapest metal known to man, or even fluorescent plastic versions, their weird, tacky light an insult to the beauty they fail to capture in their pathetic forms.
Afterwards we make our way to a tree-lined boulevard (spotted from height due to the lights in the trees) which we had viewed from the top of the tower. We arrived to discover that it was in fact the smartest street in Paris, lined with boutiques offering the highest of high fashion, and hotels with Maseratis and Ferraris parked outside. We instantly feel out of place, and I feel my long-suppressed inverted snobbery coming dangerously close to the surface. I smile at the thought of them looking down on me as I wander past in jeans and a hoody.

Day Three - Sacre Coeur and the Arc de 'Triomphe'
In the morning, we visit the wonderful cathedral on the hill, a monstrous monument to making people saintly by impressing the hell out of them, as it were. Immediately I had found the Paris I was looking for, its narrow cobbled streets filled with artists, and windmills (I kid you not). I found a little place overlooking the square in which I could happily spend my days writing, out on the balcony in the afternoon sun.
Then onto the Arc de Triomphe, or the Arc de Surrender Monkey as Jen nicknames it. I suggest the less visceral (and thus less humourous) Arc de Quelque Triomphe, and immediately realise Jen's effort was far superior. How can a country with such an ignominious military history justify such a pompous, grandiose monument to victory?
We travel onwards, by the snot-green and mint-green lines, to a big department store, the Galleries LaFayette, impressive for both the rather gauche interior, and for the fact that they have a considerable portion of one floor devoted entirely to handbags.
The day is rounded off by a wonderful meal at the sort of place I had hoped to find, serving damn good food, washed down with cheap but thoroughly enjoyable wine. Le Restaurant Epicerie, I salute you.

Day Four - Our day at the Louvre...
...except that it wasn't, because the entire museum/gallery is closed all day on Tuesday. How wonderfully Gallic, in a 'you lazy bastards' sort of way. Probably the most important institution of its kind in the world, the place I was most looking forward to visiting, and it was shut for the entire day. The guidebook, bless its little cotton socks, managed to disguise this fact by giving such a thorough list of times that it was open that you could easily miss the times it wasn't.
Undaunted (ok, thoroughly daunted in my case, but Jen's a hero) we made our way through soggy streets to Notre Dame, via a funky little garden market thing, where we bought silk butterflies.
After an afternoon spent mooching around in our hotel room, aware of the still-falling torrents of water outside, we headed out for a late evening meal, eating at a very Parisienne 10pm, in a great little place which served good salads and very refreshing pear juice. I watched the rain falling on cobbled streets outside the window, and found myself slightly disappointed at the lack of 2CVs driving past as we ate.

Day Five - Au Revoir
We leave Paris through the same strange double passport control arrangement by which we left London. The French guards couldn't care less, the British lads would have a serious struggle appearing more efficient. One of Paris' final gifts to us is the simply breathtaking display of surliness by the girl who sold us breakfast from a booth on the Gare du Nord platform. Such admirable dedication to letting us know quite how much she despised us deserves to be applauded - I smile warmly in return, then laugh to myself as we walk away. Suddenly I am very glad, more so than I had been, that we came to Paris, and I'm almost sad to be leaving.
Our trip has reinforced how little of the language I know, how far I still have to travel before chatting to French clients is easy. Still, I leave confident in the knowledge that their French is about as good as my English.
In the waiting room for the train (I absolutely refuse to call it a boarding lounge) we sit opposite a French mother and her angst-ridden teenage daughter, practising little English phrases for their journey to the UK. I wonder if it is any easier to learn our language when so much of it is visible around the globe, in so many areas.
The Eurostar harks back to the golden age of travel, when intercontinental journeys took weeks and involved case after case of luggage. But it does so in an utterly guileless manner, too bogged down in efficiency and profiteering to be a truly romantic experience. I still feel slightly special sitting in the station, waiting for my train, writing notes in a Moleskine diary, but perhaps, sadly, that is a romanticism of my own imagination.