Image by laurenatclemson.
In early December I went to Paris for four nights with Paula. It was magnificent. It’s such a beautiful city, and Parisians are truly sophisticated. It was a bit of a nightmare getting there as our plane from Belfast was delayed by almost four hours. At least we could laugh at me being totally stressed out at booking in on time.
We finally got to Paris and Paula told me her French might not be as good as she had previously inferred. None of the ATMs worked and we only had €50 on us. It was late so we decided to just cab it to the hotel which was fine, until the driver told us that our hotel wasn’t in Paris. So my hotel (booked online) that was ten minutes walk from the Eiffel Tower wasn’t in Paris eh? Well, no. There are two Avenue Marceau’s in Paris and one of them isn’t in Paris.
So we had no idea where we were going, with a taxi driver that spoke no English, a severe lack of conversational French on our side, and the money meter kept creeping higher and higher. At least my anxiety about the money and where we were going meant that I wasn’t at all worried at how the maniac was driving. We finally made it, but the ATM outside our hotel didn’t like my card and I’d managed to hide Paula’s in a very very safe place.
Luckily taxi man accepted our £10 note which was wise of him because it was a very big tip. Our hotel room was lovely and we went to bed relieved but also wondering exactly how far away from the action we really were.
And of course it wasn’t as bad as we had thought. We were in the area known as La Defence, which is the central business district except it’s not central. But it does have excellent public transport links. La Defence has La Grande Arche from the top of which (on a fine day) you can see in a straight line down Champs-Elysées, Arc de Triomphe, the Concorde square and ending at the Louvre. Fabby.
We walked and walked and walked until Paula said she could walk no more. The “touristy” bits of Paris are voluminous and fantastic. We avoided lines by not going up monuments (except La Grande Arche, which isn’t as popular as it isn’t close to everything else).
Go to Paris. It rocks.
On our last night we splurged on an expensive restaurant and it was totally worth it. Except that we drank a lot and ate very rich food and I was in agony all the way home. A trip to the doc on my return to Belfast confirmed that I probably had a stomach ulcer or some such nonsense. Gah.
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