Auckland to Paris

We left Auckland on April 29, travelling late on Sunday evening on NZ 289 to Shanghai. We didn't experience any Dreamliner delays and were relieved about that. This is our first long haul trip since the move from Qantas, and nice to start with a bit of relaxation time in the Koru lounge. The leg to Shanghai is 11.5 hrs, but leaving at 11 00 pm gives a reasonable chance of napping sleep, which we both managed to achieve. The 787 is a nice, quiet aircraft, supposedly better for jet lag as it operates at lower cabin pressure. However after 11.5 hrs in a cramped Economy class seat, surrounded by crying children, you begin to wonder about that.

Our connection to our Air France flight in Shanghai was supposed to be a layover of about three hours, aircraft availability meant it was stretched to about 4.5 hrs We didn’t find this out until we turned up to the Air France check in in Terminal 2. However given the hopeless displays of efficiency and incompetence in running an airport we experienced in Terminal 1, where our Air NZ flight arrived, we were concerned that we were going to miss the Air France flight at it's scheduled departure time. LAX used to be a pretty horrible experience for those entering the USA, Shanghai aced that well and truly. Part of the problem is arriving at Terminal 1 with a connecting flight departing Terminal 2. We had to collect our bags (after going through fingerprinting and the most unimpressive Customs and Immigration systems), then enter China and go through the whole departure procedure again.

It sounds pretty simple in theory but we've decided that Shanghai Pudong is on the "never doing that again" list. What happened? Queues crawled, at one time four officials (ie all those available) were trying to process the same person, finger printing machines and terminals didn't work, all very chaotic and there was never any indication that this was a well organised and managed system. Free Wi-Fi, yes, but the log on registration terminal doesn't work, and there is just two of these connection points in the terminal, so Wi-fi didnt make the grade.

Eventually departed Pudong, about two hours late which is not too bad in a world where the new inspection regime for Rolls Royce Trent engines on some 787 aircraft are causing disruption to schedules. Aircraft was a 777-200, a very full 11.5 hr flight. Apart from being a bit crammed, the flight was quite pleasant, food service was good and the aircrew were good.

Arrived in Paris to a cool and rainy evening, but very smooth immigration procedures (like 45 seconds each for the passport scanning). Bags arrived for collection at the time indicated on the carousel, and with "nothing to declare" we walked through the door, past the two immigration people checking one women's suitcase and Bingo, we are in Europe!!

We've always said that we'll travel Economy as long as we are fit and able. After another 30 hours travelling and time to review that decision while sitting in Economy, I'd have to say that it's up for review! Space and crying babies really impact the experience in economy class.

From Charles De Gaulle Airport to our Hotel Jardin Du Luxembourg was a breeze. There is a rail station in the Airport terminal, and a 10 Euro RER/Metro ride through the city.

The hotel is in the Latin Quarter just up the road from the hotel we stayed at in 2008, so back in familiar surroundings. 

We were feeling pretty whacked after the 30 hours of travel, arrived at the hotel at about 7 00 pm and got unpacked. The plan was a light meal of crepes at Cafe de la Nouvelle Creperie. Ann had done the homework to establish that was achievable with a short walk down the road. We were in bed by about 10 00 pm and had a good night’s sleep, awake at about 6 00 am.

Paris First Day

We were out early for a morning walk in familiar territory, but eateries were a little scarce as today is May Day, a public holiday for most of Europe. The cafe we have used for "petit dejeuner" looked as though it hadn't survived the 10 years since we went there before, but the fruit shop and the patisserie up the road were still around. Breakfast was strawberries and a pain au raisin or a pain au chocolat. The walk was lovely, all that 17th century building architecture, still looking really impressive from the outside anyway. Yes there are sometimes issues with the plumbing and the electricity.

The Metro station Luxembourg is 100m from the hotel, so we ventured out to start the day's tour, not Rick Steve this time, but a couple of self-guided walks and a guided walk later in the afternoon. All this interspersed by a little preliminary prospecting for Paris St Germain soccer strips for Sam and Fred.

The metro is a great system, and can reasonably quickly get you anywhere in the great city. Task one was to buy a carnet of 10 billets @ 1.49 Euro, about a $2.60 each. Once you are in, the ticket takes you anywhere in Paris, as long as you don't leave the Metro.

First stop for the day was Rue Cler, near the Ecole Militaire, it took us three trains to get there, all good practice! Breakfast of strawberries and the patisseries didn't include coffee so that was the first task in Rue Cler, It's a short street, about 250m long with shops servicing the locals. There were a few tourists wandering through enjoying the architecture and the produce. Cafe creme was great and I had a croissant just to keep in the French spirit.

The food shops are terrific, fantastic displays of cheese, a great range of fruit and the butcher's fare was just mouth-watering. The cote de boeuf was about twice the size of anything we can buy in NZ, and I would just love to throw one on the BBQ. The Simmental cut in the pic is smaller than the unidentified one to the left. The shop was too busy and my French too limited to quiz one of the staff on what the biggest ribs were from. Don't think they still have dinosaurs, but perhaps I'm wrong!

The streets have many people selling small posies of flowers, little white lilies of the valley (muguet de bois) - a May Day flower as we later discovered. Many shops selling wine, and very few touristy crap souvenir shops in this little precinct.

Back onto the metro and a short trip across to Concorde for our walk up the Champs Elysees to check out  two shops selling Paris St Germain gear. The club store was closed until Friday and the Nike shop not open on the day. This is France and shop opening hours can be pretty arbitrary.

We did visit the Renault shop and could have bought plenty of Renault-phile material there. Priced to support the F1 racing team and the high rents on the Champs Elysees! There was some seriously cool racing cars and other stuff in there including a full size Lego F1 car.

So we failed at the first attempt to purchase the soccer strip. So back onto the metro to visit the Tour St Jacques near Ile de la Cite and Ile St Louis. The tower was closed for May Day so we missed the view, but did enjoy the gardens.

We walked a few metres to the Seine to start our self-guided tour of Ile de la Cite. This is the birthplace of Paris harking back to the third century. We started at Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge, set up with little alcoves originally used as market stalls but also by an assortment of teeth pullers and quack doctors.

The tour takes in some lovely buildings such as the Conciergerie, the Royal Palace before the Louvre was built. Like many Paris buildings belonging to royalty, nobles or the churches it became a prison during the Revolution and it is now the Museum of the Revolution.

Rue de Lutece has a lovely flower market which we walked through, then past the Hotel Dieu, a 19th century hospital. The church had run the original medieval hospital, but conditions sound a bit tough there. Three to a bed, one sick, one dying and one dead! Notre Dame was impressive to view again, but we didn't go inside, did that the last time. The back of the cathedral with its huge flying buttresses is more impressive anyway I think!

Last stop on this isle was Le Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation. A very sobering spot remembering the 200 000 people deported from France, and who died in concentration camps in WWII. Some of these were transported by the Nazis including about 80 000 Jews, and 70 000 people repressed by the French State.

It was a day of continuous walks, so without a break we went over the bridge to Ile St Louis. This was originally a couple of piles of sand in the Seine. Henry IV ordered the two flood-prone isles to be built up to form a new residential area. So the two small isles Ile Notre Dame and Ile Vache became Ile St Louis. The island originally had the elegant residences of the nobility around the riverside perimeter, and the middle was mainly artisans and shopkeepers. However by the 19th century, the nobles had departed to Versailles and St Louis became a slum. Over time it has regained its good fortunes and has some beautifully restored buildings.

We kept walking, but the next one was a guided 2.5 hr Paris walk which was all about the French Revolution. Chris, our guide, was a great raconteur, and we had an entertaining and informative walk from the statue of Danton at the Odeon all around the Latin Quarter. The statue is Danton leading the charge - the sculptor has captured the rather ugly face quite accurately apparently!

The Revolution which in many ways, defines France and its character went on for over 10 years. There were a number of different periods, and many of the instigators and drivers of the start of the process in fact ended up under the guillotine themselves as fortunes ebbed and flowed.

Prior to the Revolution, privilege reigned supreme in France, for the upper classes. Nobility didn't pay taxes, didn't pay to go to the theatre and people were starting to get a bit sick of all that nonsense. The French poor were starving following an almost total crop failure in the North of the country which deprived the French of their staple bread. The crop failure was caused by a disastrously timed hailstorm now attributed to a huge volcanic explosion in Iceland which altered the climate for about 10 years.

The walk was very entertaining and gave some really good insights; when you pass this way we recommend you put it on your programme. Chris gave us a good understanding of what led to the Revolution, and the parts played by the various factions over the long running event. So we heard about the role of the great unwashed, pretty much "rent a mob" really, and the main protagonists, the very hesitant and dithering king, the reformers and the long-neglected peoples assembly. This was needed as it had the power to decide whether to allow the king to increase taxes. France was bankrupt and needed to replenish the empty coffers because of the country's support for the American Revolution. Then there were people like Danton and Robespierre. Napoleon Bonaparte also got a mention. A fascinating afternoon. The local cafes played an important part in building and debating the philosophies of the day, notably La Procope, the oldest restaurant in Paris where people like Robespierre and Voltaire debated and even a young unemployed Napoleon visited. He didn't have enough money to pay his bill so left his hat as security, but never returned to pay the bill. The hat is now infinitely more valuable than his debt!

It had been a long day and we stopped at a bar just off Boulevard Saint Michel for a refresher and to rest the weary legs. It was happy hour, Ann had a kir and I ordered a Panache from the beer list, assuming that it was a brand! It’s not, it’s actually a shandy, 25% beer and 75% 7Up. I was unimpressed but you never stop learning! Ask first.

For dinner we walked a short distance to Rue Racine and had a very nice meal at Bouillon Racine. This was a soup kitchen at the turn of the century then upgraded to an Art Nouveau restaurant. The wine list had some pretty flash wines, but we didn’t get any off the page in the photo.

Breakfast is a reasonably healthy affair, fruit and a patisserie, with the coffee component delayed until we are out and about.

More walking was in store for Day 2, but with a slightly different focus. We headed to Montmartre for another two hour "Paris Guided Walks". Our guide this time was Chloe, an English lass, who is obviously a committed part of the Montmartre artistic scene. She was a part time guide, actor and translator and you'd have to be in love with Paris to live for five years in a 9 square metre apartment!!

Montmartre motto is "live to have fun and have fun to live". It was originally a separate walled city that had no taxes so was a popular place to go to buy stuff for the real Parisians. Perhaps this is the origin of "duty free shopping". The vineyard seemed a reflection of this philosophy too.

Views out over Paris are great from various parts of the mount, although more local TV aerials almost overshadow the Eiffel Tower.

The history is fascinating, this was home to many artists like Pablo Picasso and Utrillo and Toulouse Lautrec, also writers such as Ernest Hemingway, novelists, poets, sculptors, film stars and dancers and saints (St Dennis who lost his head here, the locals preferred the Roman and Celtic gods, sorry mate). Lots of stairs and winding streets. Very pretty.

There are plenty of drinking fountains around the area. It was suggested that maybe they could have wine running in one near the artists' collective but it didn't get traction.

Also the area used to have 14 windmills that ground wheat to make flour and also the locally mined gypsum to make plaster of paris - more accurately plaster of Montmartre! Only one such mill survives. 

Montmartre Church was built of beautiful white stone that glistens as the rain washes it. It was intended to be a reminder to all of the power and dominance of the Church and the State (no separation there until relatively recently in 1905). After the walk we had a beer and a light lunch and then headed down into the metro. This is the deepest station on the metro line, 181 steps down into the mountain which is a mass of tunnels and caves after being used as the source of gypsum to make "Plaster of Paris" for many years. The cathedral in fact had to be built on a raft of very long piles so that its weight didn’t collapse the summit of the hill.

This was a strike day but it seems that mostly what is happening in the Metro is fewer services and less frequent schedules. Seems public support for the strikers is only about 20% so the unions don’t want to totally destroy their meagre public support by bringing the city to a halt. So far we have managed very well, there has been a train at the station within five minutes each time we've needed one. 

The next adventure was a three Metro line affair,  a trip to Stade Parc de Princes, the home of Paris St Germain, a soccer team. We were on a mission to buy the boys appropriately named playing strip with the right names and numbers on the back. Managed to get back to the hotel with just one Metro trip, and a walk home up the Boulevard Saint Michel. Tired enough to need to buy a bottle of gin and a few beers on the walk home. There’s no fridge in the room so the drinks are going to be a little warm.

A short walk again for dinner, again in familiar surroundings. A very popular little place Cafe de la Nouvelle Mairie, full of locals, mostly students. This was a “cheap” night, we tend to alternate between expensive and cheap nights. So food was OK, though my steak was a bit chewy, Ann’s was fine. The house wine was average and at 27 Euro for half a litre was really bloody expensive. So you win some and you lose some.

Thursday we had a fairly slow start, spent a bit of time doing stuff like writing up the blog and sorting the pictures. We headed out around 10 00 am, back into the Metro and across to the Bastille area. This was another short walk Ann had discovered. It took in Rue Cremieux a very pretty street with brightly painted houses with lots of fanciful painted additions to the walls.

The walk started at Gare de Lyon and took us through the markets at Aligre and Bastille. We weren’t buying at the markets but they are great places to wander through.

We had a coffee at a previous haunt, and walked past The Baron Rouge where we’d sampled wine at a previous visit. I had a great chat at a boucherie that was a little less busy than the other day at Rue Cler. The butcher and I decided that the big cote de boeuf was probably Charolais.  Again I was regretting the lack of a BBQ. But I did get to eat pig's head at our dinner that night. (In a patty, so not as dramatic as one might have expected.)

We passed some beautiful buildings en route. A most imposing boulangerie for instance!

And we saw again the very tricky way that French apartment dwellers move their furniture in and out.

There had been a few riots here on May Day, Black Shirts protesting the policies of President Macron in theory, but in practice a crowd of foreigners and local students looking to raise a bit of hell. One of the streets we walked down today had numerous shops with smashed windows that “rent a mob” had damaged in their efforts to make a point. Probably the same crew who turn up at G7 and similar conferences, to raise a bit of hell.

We ambled home , finishing our self-guided tour of Ile St Louis, and doing a bit of shopping for those left behind. I added to my pocket knife collection which I tend to do on these holiday ventures. 

Wayne and Vikki arrived late afternoon, so we had a bit of a debrief, then the traditional dinner at Fish La Boissonerie in Rue de Seine. Ross and Michelle found this place many years ago (it has Kiwi connections). We went on our 2008 trip and again with Choco and Vikki in 2012. They have been several other times on visits since. The food rates, and it's one of those 'put in on your list to visit' places.

Today is a strike day and there are dozens of police vehicles parked and waiting, with men donning riot protection gear, and each convoy protected by guards carrying some pretty heavy artillery, probably sub machine guns.

We catch a train to Beaune just after midday; we've been advised it is running as scheduled, lets hope that's right.