Jacob once again came up trumps and recommended another Sandemans walking tour. This was our third, and at 3.5 hours they are a tiring, but great way to see and learn about the city. Walking tours
Clelia let us know where our local supermarket was, and despite it being a small doorway and looking like a pharmacy, it opened out into a reasonable size supermarket. We stocked up on supplies, dropped them back at the unit, and headed back out into the Metro.
We had rather hoped we would be able to negotiate the ticket purchasing ourselves, but alas we asked for help. We knew we wanted three three day three zone tickets. The ticket lady couldn’t speak English, we couldn’t speak French. She plowed on in full flight French, perhaps oblivious to our ignorance. Then she cottoned on and called out to the the people in the turnstiles queue if any spoke English. One girl stepped forward, helped as much as she could until she to go. Then another turned up and we worked through the problem. The ticket lady was getting really excited by now, very keen to help us as much as she could and she ferreted out a Paris map, full of discounts for travellers. We parted friends. 🙂
We made our way to the square to meet the tour, then found we were 70 minutes early, so wandered some tiny lanes, which we later found were the Latin quarter. Cass bought a backpack, and we all enjoyed a waffle and coffee.
Tour guide was Sam, US born 26 year old who has lived in France for 6 years.
And the sky was blue. Lovely and unexpected.
First off was the big famous historic Notre Dame Cathedral. Plenty of people were lining up to go inside. We didn’t.
Next came a stroll alongside the Seine River., and a walk over the special bridge where people buy a lock, write their names on it, declare their love and chuck the key away. Buskers included musicians, painters and scammers. A bustle of humanity.
Then along came the Louvre. It’s now a huge huge museum that if you spent thirty seconds on each display it would take seven years to see it all. And a sprint from one end to the other takes 12 minutes in an annual race. What we learnt about Paris is that the central city region is mostly a park, and all the close city buildings limited to seven stories. Only in the distance can you see the tall gleaming modern skyscrapers Jacob and I saw at Le Defense train station and Le Dome shopping precinct.
The city centre is alive with people. It’s surrounded by museums. Anyone under 26 gets free entry to museums. Art, education, and culture are held with esteem. Quite a different culture than the normal western cities.
Then a bit further along we get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc de Triumphe. You can see the skyscrapers in the distance. Traffic was crazy, and a plan is to visit the great circle of 12 roads converging on the the great Arc, where the is a crash each thirty minutes. More famous, this is the road where Cadel Evans rode to victory in the 2011 Tour de France.
At the end of the tour, we tipped Sam, then joined him at a restaurant that sold snails and frogs legs. Jacob tried the latter, the rest of us had less adventurous fare. He took us past Napoleon’s memorial. They like him here.
We squeezed our way onto the crush of the metro at 6:30pm and arrived home just after 7pm. It’s hot, crowded, pushy, and something to be endured. Better than more walking at the end of a nearly four hour tour.
