Paris

The Eurostar train was impressive in its speed. We travelled by chair car which is the same as the A/C chair car in Indian trains. The only other feature is a well stocked dining car where one can go, buy eatables and spend time gazing out of the windows. The speed at whch the trains travels is just amazing. Its top speed is 300 km/h and that raw speed is just awesome to experience. The train just casually overtakes car on the highway that are also going at a high speed. The Channel tunnel has lights inside the tunnel, but otherwise is no different from a subway tunnel in London or Paris.


The tunnel part of the journey takes less than half and hour to complete. The journey itself was non stop from London to Paris. The train arrived promptly at the Gare Du Nord (Gare- station, Nord - north) in Paris at 11:40 AM (there is a 1 hr time difference between England and France).

Immediately we could sense the difference between London and Paris. the station was as crowded as any railway station in India (But to be fair, this particular station is the busiest station in Paris. ). We could not find anyone helpful to give us directions to get to our hotel. We thought we had to take another train to get to the hotel. But we could get no help. We then walked out of the station and the first person we encountered was an Indian. I immediately guessed he was a Tamilian, but made the mistake of speaking to him in English. I was surprised when he started speaking to me in French. I immediately asked him if he was a Tamilian and and when he answered yes, everything was allright then and we got the directions. In the event, our hotel was only a 10 min walk from the station and we checked in around 12:30.


We left the hotel after a few minutes and walked to the nearest stop where we could get the hop-on hop-off bus. Before that we got some fruits to eat at a nearby grocery shop. The buses are similar to the one we went on in London with a running commentary that one can listen to using a ear phone provided for each passenger, in the language of our choice.



This particular bus has 4 different routes and our idea was to get the Eiffel Tower as the first stop. So we had to change to a different bus once the original bus has reached central Paris. The circuitous route taken by that bus covered a lot of the places one would want to see in Paris and it was fun to get our first sights and sounds of Paris. It was in that trip that you called us from India.


We finally got the Eiffel Tower around 2PM. I have to admit the sight of the Eiffel Tower itself is well worth the whole visit to Paris. What a sight. Right from the beginning I was intrigued about the construction of the tower. How could they have built such a massive, tall structure more than a 100 yrs ago with the technology they had. Hats off to them. App, what do you think about that? Buildings constructed more recently keep getting damaged and fall, but this tower is still standing without any problems whatsoever. It does help that the design makes it stable. A very wide base and a tapering top. There is no way that this could fall.


We decided to walk to the first level. The walk was a lot of fun although very tiring. Once we reached the first level, we realised that we could walk no further and that we had to take the lift to go up. There is no choice. There was a wait for the lift and we stuck up a conversation with an elderly French couple who enquired about us. I used my broken French to answer their queries. The French are very friendly people. I have noticed in both London and Paris that the native white people are friendlier to us compared to the others such as settled Indians who seem to be less friendly and rather remote. What a paradox.

When we finally got the top of thr Tower, the view from there was both scary and breath taking. One could see the whole planned city of Paris, most of which was constructed during Napolean's rule.

After getting down, we took a relaxed stroll towards Arc De Troimphe. This is the equivalent of the India Gate, it is a war memorial built originally to commemorate Napolean’s victories. We next sax a had coffee and sandwich on the Champs Elysee, a wide road right in front of the Arc De Troimphe, with lots of fashion shops and restaurants. It is lines with beautiful trees that are trimmed so that there is an illusion of a straight line when seen. Next we went to the Place De La Concorde which is close to the Siene river and has a beautiful plaza with palaces all around. It was at one point the site of the grisly guillotine where hundreds of executions took place in the 17th century. They have now replaced this with a tall Egybtian obelisk. The obelisk is a tall stone tower with hieroglyphic symbols and is 3000 yrs old. By this time we were very tired having had a long day. We had dinner at a restaurant opposite our hotel. The French as you know have wine with their dinner and it was a pleasure to follow that custom. Wine is not very expensive and a bottle (1 lit) cost 3 Euros. By the way we had exchanged the dollars we had for Euros in London the previous evening itself. One Euro is approx. US$1.25.

The first place we headed to on Saturday morning was the Louvre museum. I insisted that we head for the Mona Lisa first. There was a small much crowd around the painting. The painting has been mounted on its own wall and there was special enclosure around it. Although the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the Louvre, there were a lot more pieces of art and sculpture that caught our attention. Frankly Meenu thought there were many paintings that we as good as or better than the Mona Lisa. The Louvre also has a very impressive collection of very ancient Egyptian antiques. We spent 3 hrs in the Louvre although one could well spend even 2 days in the Louvre alone.

We next went to the Notre Dame cathedral. The church is enormous with magnificent stained class windows. We prayed for everyone there. We then took a relaxed walk along the Siene river. Next we went to the site where the infamous Bastille prison once stood. The storming of the Bastille prison and its ultimate destruction marked the start of the French revolution.

Late in the afternoon, we had a very interesting experience. We were walking along one of the streets and Meenu noticed an antique shop. The strange thing about this shop was it was specializing only in antiques from Tamilnadu. There were lots of things ranging from the typical “swami padams” to the more expensive bronze statues. One of the strange things she had was a framed advertisement for fertilizer completely in Tamil. We spoke to the owner and realized that she was an American from Detroit. She travels a lot to TN and she even knew where Pudukottai was as she used to go to Karaikudi to get her stuff. She could even speak and read Tamil. She then told us about a Tamil shopping locality in Paris called La Chappelle. When we got there we were astounded. A half mile stretch of the road was full of Tamil stores and restaurants. We went into a couple of the stores and everyone was chatting away in Tamil. I was very impressed. Most of the Tamils in Paris we met were from Pondicherri although there were others from Ceylon too. We then went to a Tamil restaurant and had dosai, vadai and coffee. Where we really in Paris???

That evening we went to the famous Moulin Rouge. As you probably know very well, the place is full of shops openly selling erotic things and various kinds of shows. We got back to the hotel by 10PM that night.

The next day was Sunday and we went to Versailles. Versailles is the site of a massive palace and gardens and was the official seat of the royalty until the French revolution. The town itself is a 40 minutes train ride from Paris. Somehow we did not find the palace itself very impressive having seen the Buckingham Palace, although the history about the palace was fascinating. The gardens behind the place was one of the most impressive gardens one could see anywhere in the world. They are spread around 100s of acres and really a sight to behold. We got back to Paris by 4PM and went once again to Champs Elysee to just take a walk and watch the crowds. We sent you a card from the Renault F1 racing team’s official shop there. Did you get it?

By this time we were exhausted and were waiting to get back home and be with the kids. We got back to the hotel and had dinner at the same place that I mentioned earlier.

The next day was the day of departure to Boston. We decided to sleep late at least once during our vacation. So we got up only at 9AM and had a leisurely breakfast. We packed up our things and took a train to the Charles De Gaulle airport. We reached there by 11:15. Our flight was at 12:45 and took off on time. We reached Boston on time around 4PM, took the Logon Express bus to Framingham. From the bus stand we took a taxi to go home and reached home by 5:15.

In hindsight I realized that the most precious thing for us was the time spent together alone. Of course we had fun sight seeing in London and Paris, but we would have had the same fun in any place. This opportunity was very special and may not come again. We were indeed fortunate that Meenu’s mom managed to take care of the kids in spite of her age and health.