Chapter 2- Ile de France & Normandy

ILE DE FRANCE (PARIS)

Early the next morning (7:00am) on Sunday June 12, we had to quickly take the Tube to King's Cross St. Pancreas where we boarded and arrived at the Eurostar Train for the trip to Gare du Nord in Paris. This 'bullet' train travelled at 274 Km/hr and took us 2 hours to arrive in Paris. We arrived at 1:45pm Paris time 1 hour ahead from London). While the trip was comfortable, we didn't see anything from our window until we reached France. We shared a cabin with 3 other people, the furnishings were old looking and worn. As we drove through the French countryside, we passed by several towns and villages without stopping, but arriving into the industrial area of Paris I could see graffiti sprayed on the train station yards. We got off the train and as we walked into the station, taxi drivers approached us out of the blue. We brushed them off, and then stood outside looking for a legitimate taxi cab. Then a cab driver approached us with a ride and mentioned the price and I decided to accept the cost of 65 Euros as part of the system. He got us to our hotel in the Montmartre district quickly at 2:30pm, but we were alarmed at the outrageous price and remained angry with cabby who had clearly taken advantage of our naivety in our haste to get to our hotel destination.

Paris first appeared to be much dirtier, more poorer looking than I thought, with the accompanying smells peculiar to Paris in the

summer. Our hotel was called Les Lumieres, set on what looked like a rough looking street in the 13th Androisement (borough). We entered and greeted by the manager who gave told us the doors were always open 24 hours a day and we grabbed our luggage and took the tiny lift to the 4th floor. The room was very small, but clean. It was cool, cloudy and showery with some sunny periods that day and remained like that for almost our entire Paris portion of our trip. We decided to take an excursion to Sacre-Coeur, by a quick bus ride and then a long walk up the highest point in Paris where we climbed the steep staircase to the Basillica of the Sacred Heart of Paris. It was built between 1875-1914. We viewed the entire city of Paris from this popular vantage point. We walked around the market district filled with tourists and painters, with small cars driving through narrow lanes of this historic part of Paris. We enjoyed a fantastic creme brule and pistachio gelatto.

At 7:00pm that night we had dinner at a classic brasserie, "Nord Sud Brasserie" where I had salmon and Pat had chicken, all with some white wine and a carafe of still water. After dinner we headed back to the hotel and then took the bus to the famous cabaret event, Moulin Rouge. It was rainy that night and we had to buy an umbrella. When we arrived at 8:30pm, there were massive crowds (10,000) of Irish football fans for the Euro 2016, singing their anthems and songs all along the three Irish pubs beside the historic 127 year old Moulin Rouge cabaret. Police cordoned off the area. The chanting sound from the Irish fans was absolutely deafening. We had to squeeze by and finally entered the hall at 8:45pm for the 9:00pm show. As we were seated in the plush red interior with long tables and candles on every table, the waiter provided us with our bottle of champagne. It was a fantastic show with semi-nude show girls dressed in their

splendid colourful costumes. The music was fabulous and in one dance routine, a glass tank rose from the floor filled with water and giant snakes. Then a semi nude dancer dived into the tank and performed under the water with the snakes. We watched the traditional French can can dance, and in one routine a man with skates spun his female partner around his head. There were close to 850 people that night and it remains the highlight of our trip.A truly recommended event. We walked back the hotel in the rain and were in bed at 12:30pm.

So we started Monday June 13 at 7:00am, with a breakfast at the small breakfast room of the hotel. I then ran to get a 5 day Metro/Bus pass and we then skooted over to get our bus just up the street from our hotel for our excursion to the Musee du Louvre , a 30 minute trip to Central Paris. We finally arrived at the Louvre at 9:20 am and saw the sprawling former palace of French kings. We went though the security screening at Glass Pyramid entrance and were amazed at how big the Louvre really is. However, as we walked around the Museum, we were not really impressed... It seemed to be layers of and corridors of rooms, with a lack of real organization. It was a very

humid day and lots of people filled each room. The exhibits were not as inspiring as I expected. We had lunch at the restaurant which was not very clean and the cost was quite expensive. We did manage to see the painting by Leonardo Da Vinci called the Mona Lisa, but it was uninspiring, with literally several hundreds of people that you could barely see the painting behind the glass. We continued our walk through the museum where we saw a courtyard dedicated to ancient Roman and Greek statutes. We did see some of the major impressionist painters and some of the classical French and Italian renaissance art. There were large galleries filled with Arab/Islamic art, Dutch and Flemish paintings, and a few great paintings that I wanted to see but missed; "The Coronation of Emperor Napoleon" and " Liberty Leading the People" all by Jacques Louis David. Soon it became overwhelming... and as we entered one giant gallery after another, it was close to 3:00pm. We left at 3:30pm so we could get

ready for our dinner at the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is a wrought iron latice tower and remains the largest structure in Paris and was constructed in 1889 to celebrate the 1889 World's Fair.

We took the bus back to our hotel, got changed and took a bus out to the Eiffel Tower Restaurant for our reserved dinner at 6:30pm (85 Euros each). We walked past the Arc de Triomphe and arrived early at the giant Eiffel Tower (with the Euro Football hanging from the middle of the tower) and waited for 30 minutes before dining. At 6:00pm we took the elevator up to the centre of the Eiffel Tower (the first level upper platform) where we entered the 58 Tour Eiffel, the most fashionable brasserie in Paris, with large glass windows overlooking the city of Paris. We were seated beside a an Australian couple who we struck up an interesting conversation. Our dinner included a flute of champagne, soup, chicken, cake for dessert and Americano coffee. We finished our meal by 8:30pm and decided to

walk outside around the Eiffel Tower platform where we could see all the major landmarks including the Trocadero museum and in the far distance we could see, the bridges crossing the Seine River and the Basilica at Sacre Couer. It was here that we took our first romantic kiss along the observation deck! We then decided to walk down the Eiffel Tower steps rather than take the lift.

At 8:30 pm, we decided to take a Seine Cruise and so we hopped aboard a riverboat along the river and cruised underh the bridges of Paris, passing by the major monuments of Paris, and returned back to where we saw the Eiffel Tower all lit up in sparkling orange lights. It was a marvelous evening. We finished the Seine cruise by 10:00pm and took the Metro back to our hotel in Montmartre by 11:0pm.

We arose on our next journey on June 14 at 11:00am and well rested.

We needed food and so walked down Rue Ordener and passed by a classic boulangerie/patisserie on our way to find a place for brunch, where we eventually found a brasserie called Cafe'D'Albert. There, we enjoyed a brunch of cheese omelette, cafe au lait and water, Very pleasantly, "French".

After our meal, we hopped aboard the Metro train to central Paris to see Musée D'Orsay, a former railway station, now one of the largest art museums in Europe. It was fantastic and more enjoyable than the Louvre. We saw all the French Impressionist art of the late 19th & early 20th Century, the likes of Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Degas. There was also classic art of France, including sculptures, vases and engravings. Some of the most intimate portraits include the "The Origin of the World" by Gustave Courbet, the beautiful "Woman with a Parisol" by Aristide Maillol, the vivid painting called

"Pilgrims Going to Mecca" by Leon Belly, and the serene paintings of Alfred Sisley. For lunch, we stopped in to the splendid Cafe Campana, where we enjoyed a cafe au lait, a banana loaf and a deliciously large Peach Melba! We could easily spend two full days in these art showrooms of Musee D'Orsay, but alas, we had to depart this museum for the rest of our day.

In the later afternoon we walked over to the historic Notre Dame cathedral, a medieval gothic building completed in 1345 it sits beside

the Seine River and stepped inside the ornate and rich interior where the daily mass was being celebrated with prayers, hymns and a pastoral sermon. An old hunched, head-scarfed woman was begging outside the cathedral and it felt frightfully like the 18th century. By the early evening, it was pouring with rain off and on and so we walked around the Latin Quarter and then found a cafe called Cafe Panis where we sat down for a 7:30pm supper - Salmon Penne and a chicken burger. Moments before, the whole district was ringing with sirens as police swarmed the area. Apparently a police woman was shot by a terrorist the previous night and now the police were raiding

a house nearby. By 9:00pm we were taking the Metro train ride back to our hotel, and in bed by 11:30pm.

The next morning, Wednesday June 14, we awoke to a very cold shower. We complained but the manager said the whole street was being affected... yeah! We had breakfast at the hotel and then took the metro to St. Lazare Station in Paris and boarded a cramped older high speed SNCF train car with 4 other people in our section at 9:00pm, where we made a journey to the Normandy Coast to see June Beach Centre, the 1944 landing ground of Canadian troops. We arrived two hours later at the city of Caen. From there we took a "Green Bus" for a 1.5 hour ride to a little coastal town called

Courseulles-sur-Mer. We then had to walk 10 minutes to the very beach where Canadian troops helped liberate Normandy. We visited the museum housing the relics of Canadian history, principally during WWII.

We joined a tour of the outside grounds where we saw inside the German observation bunker that was part of the Nazi Atlantic Wall and guarded the beach front, and a German command post with an underground tunnel. I was also able to stand on the very beach where on June 6, 1944 Canadian troops of the Royal Canadian Rifles landed. On my extreme left we could see where the Canadian Scottish Regiment landed, and to the right of us we could see where the Regina Rifles Regiment, followed by the Queen's Own Rifles regiment, and to their extreme right, the North Shore Regiment of New Brunswick. These made up the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division all landing on Juno Beach (8 km in length) between the town of Vaux on the western side and Berniere sur Mer on the eastern side. When I learned from my uncle that my Grandfather who was with the 48 Royal Marine Commando unit(an elite British assault infantry regiment) landed on the right flank of Juno Beach at a place between Saint Aubin sur Mer and Luc sur Mer, I was ecstatic! While I could

not actually visit the place where he landed all those years ago, I could see the landing beach at the village of Saint Aubin sur Mer from our vantage viewpoint, almost 8 km east of Courseulles sur Mer.

Well after this quick tour we had to get back to Paris. So we walked back to our bus which drove us back along the same roads to Caen that Canadian and British troops travelled when they liberated that city in June 1944. From there we hopped on to the train for Paris. Once at our hotel we had dinner at Nord Sud where I had duck comfit, Pat had Salmon, and we both enjoyed a glass of wine, and for dessert, raspberry ice cream. Back at our hotel we finished off watching the Euro Match between France and Albania with France winning 2/0. We were in bed by 11:30pm.

On Thursday June 16, we woke at 7:00am, and I headed down the street to pick up some breakfast at a Patisserie. I bought 2 crepes, a

pastry and 2 small coffees and brought it back to the hotel where we enjoyed our little 'continental breakfast'. We had a big day ahead of us as we purchased tickets for Versailles Palace. We took a 20 minute metro train ride to Versailles and arrived at the town of Versailles, 12 miles SW of central Paris. There were hordes of people mostly from China, with at least 10 tour buses. It is a very regal palace with the statute of King Louis in front, with the glittering gold gates and splendidly gilded rooftop. Versailles was first built as a hunting lodge for Louis XIII in 1623 and eventually expanded to become palatial estate by the French Revolution.

As we went through the State Rooms we found it very hot (98% humidity) and with people all pushing their way forward through these giant halls it became quite uncomfortable. After almost 2 hours of touring the Palace including the Hall of Mirrors, we escaped the frenzy and went outside to visit the gardens for two hours. We walked

in the downpour of rain and finally reached the Petit Trianon on the grounds of the Versailles estate. It was a grand chateau for King Louis XV and built between 1762-1768. We actually liked this quiet chateau better then Versailles Palace. After renovations the King gave the Petit Trianon in 1774 to his wife Marie Antoinette. As we toured around Marie Antoinette's gardens, we got soaked in the rain. The temperature all day was a cool 13-16 degrees. We then visited the Grand Trianon (1688-1708), a much larger house where King Louis XIV (1643-1715) lived. Finally our touring was done and got on to the 15 minute mini tram back to the Palace of Versailles.

We walked to the train station in the Paris suburb of Versailles and travelled back to our hotel by 5:00pm. Our day was not done because we had to do our large laundry and so we found a laundromat nearby our hotel, which cost us 16 Euros or $23 Canadian dollars. By 8:30pm at the hotel we were hungry and so I went out looking for take out food. I found a French Pizzeria and ordered a Poulet Royal (16 Euros). I also found a grocery store selling small Sauvignon Blanc wine bottles(1.80 Euros). We finally got packed and headed to bed at 11:30pm.