Paris: 14 million Parisians can't be wrong.

Paris during the war

We’ve recently been to France for a few days during half-term. For something different we’ve decided to do ‘his’ and ‘her’ views of Paris. So here goes…

Hers:

Well as we set off for Paris I was all too aware of the possibility of being disappointed with the ‘city of lights’ not living up to the romanticised visions in my head. The stories (which everyone seemed to tell us) of rude French, filth and sleaze threatened to ruin the supposed romance capital… surely they couldn’t be true.

The signs around Paris before the official language
was changed to German

As soon as we arrived in Paris I became all too aware that the rumours of them still speaking French were all true. Seemingly simple tasks, like finding our way out of the train station, became challenging missions. Our first 15 or 20 minutes in Paris were spent standing, looking fairly helpless in the station. It was at this point that I realised how under prepared we were. No map, no directions, no ability to speak French and no clue how neither of us had considered any of these things prior to arriving!

Jokes aside, it seems almost impossible to take a bad photo in Paris, its just looks that good

Now in terms of first impressions there’s only one word to describe Paris after having spent 6 months in London. Paris was bright. The sun was shining, and there were no dreary looking clouds. Instead the sky was blue and people seemed to be making the most of it. And although there were numerous sex shops, there was nothing any worse than any other large city. The smell of French pastries, crepes and waffles wafted through the air. It seemed the rumours were false.

Notre Dame sans Hunchback

Paris, within a few hours, was given a well earned ‘thumbs up’ on aesthetics and atmosphere. It had a chic sophistication like nowhere else I’ve been and our lack of French made it easy to block out a lot of the noise, eg the giggling school girls on the metro sounded much more enchanting than those in London. They were probably talking about someone projectile vomiting in someone else’s shoes, but there’s something more alluring when you can’t actually understand them.

The leaning tower of Paris

Moving on; our next stop was at Disneyland. It was here that I realised how much of an effect Mike has had on me over the past few years. My level of cynicism reached an unprecedented high. It was on this day that all my Disney dreams came crashing down around me, leaving nothing more than a substantial hole in our bank account and the realisation that Disney isn’t even about pleasing kids these days. When you look around the park there are more kids crying and throwing tantrums than skipping around with smiles on their faces.

Disneyland, a never ending cavalcade of dodgy characters, here
Minnie and Mickey argue about what the hell Goofy is if he isn't a dog

Disneyland seemed to be a never ending queue from the minute you queue to get in the gate. And just when you think you’re finally moving, you find your queue is just moving to the end of another queue. After a day of continual queuing, which only stopped when we took a break for some overprice lunch (which we needed to queue for), I too felt like throwing a tantrum! So that was Disneyland, in a nutshell, and I don’t see myself ever visiting another one of their parks anytime soon.

The Eiffel Tower looks different at night.

The world famous Paris Opera House, actually part of the 'Its a
Small World' exhibit at Disneyland

Possessed Dolls that ate small children

And our last stop was Lille, which was a fantastic place to just chill for a day. We got to go on our first driverless train. We also got to sample another great café for our last lunch, which served fantastic seafood, before heading back to more familiar soil. It was quiet strange the feeling we both got when we arrived back in London. We arrived quite late at night and had to get the tube home, but there was a weird sort of relaxation and comfort. Whilst in France there was this ever present worry that someone would speak at us in French, and of course we wouldn’t have a clue what they were saying. We were sitting on the Metro one day when it suddenly occurred that if there was a train accident, or fire I wouldn’t even know where ‘exit’ was written. All in all though, it was a great trip and we’re looking forward to going back.

I also have a new hobby ….learning French!

His

You were warned that we may start skipping around in time when recording what we have been doing in this blog, but I promise that we will at least let you know when things happened. So we need to whip back in time to February and our half term trip to Paris and Lille. Just to clarify why this blog has taken so long to write I should let you know the reason. I’m sure that Krystle, who is writing the other perspective for this entry will give you a plausible explanation but the real reason is that it has taken considerable time to decide on a categorising system that will allow us to organise by the degree of angle the numerous pictures taken of the Eiffel Tower. Now when I say numerous, we still haven’t actually finished counting let alone organising all the pictures, but when complete will be able to let people view the tower from every conceivable angle from any desired distance. There are a lot of photos.

We took the train to Paris from London in a time a little over two hours. Very pleasant, extremely picturesque scenery across the French countryside and a most recommended way to travel. We got to Paris Gare du Nord, the main station in Paris and realised we didn’t really have any idea where we needed to go to get to our hotel. We hadn’t yet figured out how to use the Metro, which is actually easy and efficient once you know how, and found that the French don’t speak English as a first language, who knew!

The metro in all its glory

The reality is of course that despite their reputation the French are not arrogant, but to this day remain bewildered that English has become the most widely spoken language in the world over their far more preferred option. This is of course because all the good TV shows in the world are made in English, and having seen French TV their shows are no good at all. Cultural domination is of course achieved through media and the French are known for arty films that make little sense and not much else. English 1 French 0!!!

The world's most famous tunnel.

As the main speaker of the language, based on failing year seven French and having been there once before, my main tactic was one of two choices (and remember if you are using either of these methods when visiting a foreign land I recommend a mixture of the 2 approaches, neither is as effective on their own.) Approach 1 is to babble some barely incoherent French and look forlorn, in the hope that someone would speak English out of sympathy, or Approach 2, stare mutely around looking forlorn. Approach 2 managed to get us directed to where the Taxis were and Approach 1 got us a private cab ride right to our door. Approach 1 generally got us food and wine, while Approach 2 seemed to work well when needing directions. Feel free to use these on your own travels.

Looking up the river towards the Bastille monument.

That said we didn’t go hungry, we found our way around the city and had probably as good a time there as anywhere we’ve visited so far. We were blessed by almost perfect weather for our two days in the city. The trip was actually a belated celebration for our 2^nd wedding anniversary. Krystle thought the idea of visiting the ‘romance capital’ of the world seemed perfect. I wasn’t so sure, I mean every anniversary from now on will be a disappointment and having visited Paris before I hadn’t been that endeared to the city, but the last visit was in summer and this was Paris in late winter. It proved a sensational time to visit and looking around Paris made us both realise what a beautiful and well presented city it is. London has elements that compare but so much of London is spoiled but horrid buildings built in the city during the 1950’s and 60’s, where the uniformity of Paris’s style and architecture is a triumph in visual delights.

The food in the city was exquisite. We only once resorted to burgers and fries once and tried to eat where ever we thought we could figure out the menu enough that was authentically French, and an Italian restaurant where they definitely didn’t speak English. We ate at a restaurant/ bar that had the best waiter either of us have ever seen in action. The man knew his trade and it was surprising how entertaining it was watching someone just doing their job. But when you are used to barely competent service both here and at home, it was a refreshing sight.

After Paris, and again the photos will let you see where we went and what we saw, we took a train to Euro Disney and visited the two Parks they have. It was ok, maybe a little disappointing, so we headed off to Lille for a night.

Disneyland castle

And the Dream Castle where we stayed.

We stayed at an apartment a little outside of Lille which was probably the most cost effective place we’ve stayed. We had a look around Lille and again found it a beautiful city, on a smaller scale to Paris of course, but really no less attractive.

So that was our trip, one of our favourite places so far, and we will be heading back that way in May. The most impressive thing was that, despite warning Krystle about the French inclination for pissing in the street, we only saw 2 guys pissing against a wall down near the river. And far enough to, it was a great view. It was good to see the French are civilizing after all.