We arrived in Paris late on Thursday afternoon and settled into our campsite by the River Seine. It was a lovely setting amongst leafy trees with an abundance of birds busying themselves with spring activities. Across the road was a golf course and a large woodland park area and not far away was the famous Longchamp Racecourse. It was hard to believe we were only just over 5 kilometres from central Paris. This was our base for the next four nights as we explored Paris and its surrounds. We have both been to Paris before, Andrew a few times and me only once, and to be honest my impression of Paris from the one visit was not positive so I was hoping this visit would change my mind.
Day 1: Paris on Foot
If you look at a map of Paris the central area is a big circle with a ring road running around the outside separating the inner and outer suburbs. The Metro lines run to the edge of this circle and from there other forms of public transport, trains, buses and trams, take over to service the outer suburbs. Our campsite offered a shuttle bus service to the nearest Metro station at Porte Maillot which we took the next morning. Once we were there we made the snap decision not to take a Metro but instead to walk. Walking is a great way to get your bearings in a city and you see much more than you do popping up at one metro station and then popping up at another.
The Arc de Triomphe was only 1km from Porte Maillot and was therefore the obvious first destination. This magnificent arch was commissioned by Napoleon to honour his victorious army. Unfortunately, the project ran over budget and over time and Napoleon was long dead by time it was completed. It is now an iconic landmark in Paris and very popular with tourists. There was a queue when we arrived, but it moved fast, and it didn’t take long before we were climbing the stairs to the top. The Arc de Triomphe is in the centre of Charles de Gaulle Place, a busy roundabout from which 12 symmetrical avenues radiate outwards from like spokes in a wheel, the most famous being the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It was mesmerizing watching the cars whizz around below us and the buzz of activity in the avenues beyond. It is a great vantage point to appreciate this city and get the lay of the land.
From the Arc de Triomphe we walked down Champs-Élysées, the trees lining the avenue were just coming out in leaf. Past the Jardins des Champs-Élysées filled with spring bulbs, and through Place de la Concorde with the impressive gold-topped Egyptian Obelisk and the ornately carved Fontaine des Mers and Fontaine des Fleuves. Tuileries Garden was awash with spring colour and filled with people enjoying the sunshine. Chairs were scattered around the ponds and we sat awhile, people and duck watching. A bit further on, just before we got to the Louvre, is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel topped with four bronze horses pulling a chariot. Not to be confused with it’s larger cousin up the road, this one was also commissioned by Napoleon but as it is a lot smaller it was finished on time and while he was still Emperor.
The arch is the gateway to the grounds of impressive Louvre museum with its iconic glass pyramid jutting up from the centre of the grand courtyard, acting as the entranceway to the museum. The Louvre is the biggest museum in the world and with a collection of over 35,000 works spread over 60,000 square metres it is said to take 100 days to see everything, if you looked at each item for 30 seconds, all day without a break. Despite both having visited before, we were lured back in. The last time I was here the queue had stretched well out into the courtyard. This time it was only about 20 deep inside the foyer. Considering 15,000 people visit each day we counted ourselves lucky. Because of the size of this museum it isn’t crowded apart from when you arrive at the most famous painting in the Louvre, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Everyone congregates around this masterpiece, which is surprisingly small for such a big reputation. The other gathering point is in front of the armless Greek sculpture of Venus de Milo. Most of our time was spent in the “paintings section” and with 7,500 artworks in this area alone there was little energy left for many other sections: Eastern Antiquities, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities, Egyptian Antiquities, Prints and Drawings, Decorative Arts, Sculptures, Islamic Art and so on. You can see why it would take 100 days to see it all.
Back out in the sunshine it was time to refuel with a baguette in the park. After lunch we crossed the Seine using the Pont de Arts pedestrian bridge and walked along the left bank where stalls selling vintage French Art Nouveau prints line the footpath – think Chat Noir and Moulin Rouge. The distinctive stone arches of Pont Neuf marked to beginning of Ile de la Cité, the island in the Seine where the Notre Dame Cathedral sits. We crossed Pont Neuf to the island, walked through Place Dauphine, past the city courthouse and state police station, to the Notre Dame. We were admiring the impressive façade of the cathedral and deciding whether to line up to go in when police descended on the square and quickly removed everyone from the area and closed the cathedral. It may have been an exercise, given the cathedral is directly across from the police station and they didn’t seem to be overly concerned, but we weren’t waiting around to find out and quickly crossed over to the Latin Quarter.
The Latin Quarter has been the bohemian area of Paris for centuries and got its name from the students communicating in Latin well before the French Revolution. It is a lively place filled with quirky stores, museums, eateries, bars and galleries, and is the home to France’s oldest University La Sorbonne, among other higher educational institutions. We wandered through the colourful streets soaking up the atmosphere, slowly making our way back towards the Eiffel Tower.
Our feet were starting to remind us we’d covered a lot of ground and by the time we reached the base of the tower we calculated we’d walked close to 15 kilometres. Time to stop for a while, sit on a park bench and laugh at the millennials posing like models for every photo they take.
The last time I was in Paris you could walk underneath the tower and I remembered it as being filled with hawkers and tricksters trying to wrangle money off you. Not anymore. It’s completely closed off so only people with tickets to climb the tower can enter the area through glass doors and after passing through security. But, when we were there no one was entering. The tower was closed. We thought it a bit odd and wondered if the police clearing out the Notre Dame had anything to do with it. I started imagining terrorist plots and was pretty sure I was on to something when Andrew suggested maybe we should ask one of the security guards. It was closed due to strike action.
We crossed the Seine again to the gardens in front of Palais de Chaillot where people were relaxing in the sun enjoying the views back to the tower. Up the stone steps crowds gathered to take photos with that iconic backdrop, the Eiffel Tower. We joined the throngs and asked obliging strangers to take some of us.
By now it was late afternoon and we were still a couple of kilometres from the pick-up point of the campsite shuttle. We briefly contemplated catching a Metro from Victor Hugo Place but decided we’d finish what we started, doing Paris on foot.
Day 2: Versailles
The next day we headed to the outskirts of Paris to visit the Palace of Versailles. The train drivers were on strike again so to get there we took a tram and then a long bus ride. Our bus, and every bus we passed, was packed with people. The 13.5km journey took nearly an hour and a half. These rolling strikes are incredibly disruptive.
The bus stopped directly across from the Palace and we were taken aback by its grandeur, and by how many tour busses were there. As it was already afternoon and we hadn’t eaten we decided to find somewhere for lunch in the village before joining the crowds in the Palace. I had a hankering for crepes and we found a lovely creperie that served delicious savoury buckwheat crepes, more than satisfying my craving.
We walked back to the palace, through the gilded iron gates and past the heavily armed military police to the ticket office. There was a long queue in front of the ticket office window but in an adjacent room there were lots of automated ticket dispensers and no one using them. We took a look, they seemed straight forward, we purchased our tickets and were ready to go. All the while the “sheeple” in the ticket office queue had only moved one place forward. We couldn’t avoid the queue to get into the palace itself, as there were the obligatory security checks to go through, but it didn’t take long, and we were soon inside.
The Palace of Versailles was built by Louis XIII in 1623 as a hunting lodge and was enlarged into a royal palace by Louis XIV in the 1660s and 1670s. The interior of the Palace is exquisitely opulent. The walls of the Gallery of Battles are lined with impressive paintings of battle scenes depicting nearly 15 centuries of French military action – some explicitly gruesome and violent, and all with the French as victors. The palace is proudly French to the core and all the materials used in building and decorating Versailles were made in France.
The most famous room, and the one I was most looking forward to seeing, is the Hall of Mirrors, containing a total of 357 mirrors. At the time it was built Venice had a monopoly on making mirrors so Venetian artisans were lured to France. The Venetians then ordered the assassination of the mirror makers for giving their secrets away. A dark side to a room filled with light. The same could be said of the outcome of the Treaty of Versailles that was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. Signed to end the First World War, it was meant to bring lasting peace to Europe.
Behind the Palace are beautifully manicured formal gardens containing over 400 sculptures and 1,400 fountains. You could spend hours, even days here as the actual grounds extend for more than 30,000 hectares.
We had had our fix of French nobility, it was time to return to reality. There was still plenty of daylight when we got to the campsite, so we went biking through the woodland park to the Roland Garros tennis stadium, home to the French Open, and back past the Longchamp Racecourse, home of one of the world’s most prestigious horse races, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Day 3: City of Love
Our final day in Paris was our wedding anniversary and Andrew had the idea to find a street artist to do our portrait to mark the occasion. We took the shuttle back to the metro station and caught the underground to the Montmartre district which was once where all the Parisian artists lived. Andrew had seen street artists doing portraits on the hill during a previous visit. On the top of the Montmartre hill is the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur with its distinctive white domes like dollops of whipped cream. We joined the other tourists and walked through the gardens on the hillside and up the wide steps to the church, all the while looking out for a street artist at work. There was no sign of any. Where had all the artists of Montmartre gone? We admired the view across Paris from the hilltop and took a look in the beautiful church, before heading back down the other side of the hill to catch a Metro into the city centre. We had decided to try our luck finding an artist on the left bank of the Seine, near the Latin Quarter. As we’d missed out on seeing the Notre Dame Cathedral because of the police activity we took the opportunity to see it and got off at the station nearest this famous church. Intricately carved, dark, cavernous, and very Gothic – this Cathedral is incredibly impressive. But there was no sign of Quasimodo.
We finally found a portrait artist at work on the left bank of the Seine. He was in the middle of a caricature and told us he’d be at least another half hour and would be around for a couple of hours after that if the rain held off. Perfect, we could have our anniversary lunch. We found a quaint bistro in the Latin Quarter that was serving traditional French country cuisine. The waiter recommended the beef bourguignon which we washed down with a lovely Burgundy. When we emerged, it was starting to rain, and our portrait artist was just about to pack up and go home. He was more than happy to stay, found an umbrella to shelter his easel and got to work. Sitting still for such a long time tested our attention levels but it was amusing to watch the reactions from passers-by as they looked at the easel and then up to us and then back to the easel and smiled, laughed, nodded or gave a thumbs-up. An hour and a half later we had our portrait. We looked a little more serious than we might have liked, and a little cat-like, but all in all we were pleased. Happy Anniversary Mr Love!
Day 4: Champagne
It was time to leave Paris, but not quite time to leave France. We had one more place to visit –Champagne.
As we drove out of the campsite we reflected on our time in Paris. I was underwhelmed when I visited 8 years ago, it was dirty and there were a lot of beggars and hawkers about. I wasn’t expecting much to have changed but I was proved wrong. The city was clean and vibrant and although there were still a few beggars about we weren’t hounded, and we felt safe. Paris had redeemed itself.
The city of Reims is about 150kms from Paris and is the unofficial capital of the Champagne wine-growing region, with many of the champagne houses headquartered there. We had booked an early afternoon tour of the champagne caves at Domaine Pommery as our farewell before heading out of France and in to Luxembourg. The champagne houses are very grand, sitting behind tall gates at the end of sweeping driveways, and Pommery is particularly palatial. The light blue Elizabethan-style chateau is reminiscent of a fairy-tale castle. Complete with cone-like spires it reminded me of a children’s birthday cake.
The chateau was built by Louise Pommery in the late 1800’s when she took over running the company after her husband’s death. Under Louise’s guidance the first brut champagne was invented at Pommery – before that is was a sickly-sweet drink and nothing like we know champagne today.
Underneath the chateau lies 18 kilometres of caves. Once Gallo-roman chalk mines, they were converted to champagne cellars where now over 20 million bottles of champagne are stored at a constant temperature of 10 degrees. Our tour took us down the steep steps to 30 metres underground and through the maze caves, past the many racks containing thousands of bottles of champagne fermenting to perfection. Louise Pommery was an art lover and collector and the caves feature art from her era and also contemporary installations and sculptures, making the caves of Pommery quite different to other champagne caves in Reims. The caves are all named after cities – every time a new market was established Louise named a cellar after that city.
Near the end of the tour we were shown a cellar where their premium vintages are kept. Bottles from as far back as 1904 lie in the dark waiting for the call to be brought up into the light and consumed for the small price tag of 50,000 to 120,000 Euros.
We weren’t treated to a such excess but still finished our tour with a very nice glass of Grand Cru 2000 Vintage Champagne – the perfect end to our time in France.
Wow! I think Paris is special. Loved your description Louise and congratulations to you and Andrew on your wedding anniversary.❤️