Hoke’s Ramblings

Ah, may favourite pastime: killing time in airports. I’m about 40 minutes away from hopping on the plane back home.

Went for a final stroll along the Seine this morning, took some snaps of Paris’s most decorated bridge and popped in at Notre Dame again before heading off to St Sulpice. My little science experiment there wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped, though.

My wish for better cloud cover finally came true on the one day on my trip that I wanted bright sunlight.

About twenty other people and I spent an hour waiting around for Paris true noon (13h00, thanks to daylight savings). As the bells rang, a feeble patch of light appeared about half a metre away from the marble plaque that the sun is meant to cross on the Summer Solstice (today).

It took about 15 minutes to reach the brass line, and that doesn’t seem to tie up with what I was expecting. I think that the original hole in the stained glass window was covered up, and the patch we saw was just a coincidental piece of missing glass (after all, it was square, not round like it was supposed to be)

[Edit: I should have thought a bit harder at the time: based on Paris’s longitude, true noon should actually have been at 13:51, GMT+2 time (SA and French summer time), so I actually left St Sulpice about thirty minutes before the actual event - merde. Homework for engineers: verify or (preferably) discredit my calculations. Extra credit: explain why the answer has to be adjusted by an additional 90 seconds.]

Nonetheless, it was an interesting experience, but straight after that it was hopping back to the hotel where I’d left my luggage and then more bus, M?tro and train hopping to Charles De Gaull airport, which has taken up place as my least favourite international airport, ahead of Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos airport.

All in all, Paris was a fabulous experience, just a bit hard on the feet.

Well, I must say, I have mixed feelings about the new Disney Studios park. I’ve always preferred Universal Studios to Disneyland, because it’s more in touch with the movie industry than just a garish theme park. Disney Studios is a feeble attempt to clone that.

The back-lot tram tour was quite uninspired, although I may be a bit biased in saying that, because one of the “hot set” features wasn’t working at the time (from the park map it looks like a lot of flames and water everywhere). A few of their “behind the scenes” things were rather lame, but there was good stuff to report, too.

The Armageddon Special Effects attraction was quite entertaining, and very well done. The poor little kid next to me was shrieking and bawling her eyes out while we were on MIR being obliterated by the asteroid.

The crowning feature of this park, however, is their stunt show, presented by Opel. It is utterly mind blowing, enthralling, hilarious and a whole bunch more adjectives I can’t put my finger on right now. It really puts the Waterworld stunt show at Universal to shame. A whole bunch of stunt shots for a “movie”, that just keep getting better and better, with some surprises along the way, including a cameo by a certain celebrity car (I know what you’re thinking, but no, not the one The Hoff drove in the 80’s!)

I got through the main attractions in about three hours, so I’m very glad I happened to go at a time when they were having a park-hopping special (Access to Disney Studios AND Disneyland for the price of a single park). I thought I’d go on a nostalgia trip and visit my favourite rides from Disneyland USA again.

The revamped Space Mountain Mission 2 was impressive, but I spent most of the ride making sure my neck was still on my shoulders to take in the speeding galaxy properly. Then I went to see the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience spectacular. This is a 3D immersive movie, replete with hydraulic effects and a bunch more “interactive” surprises. It lost a bit of its touch having to wear clunky slimy headphones for the “translation” (back into the original English) but still undoubtedly one of the best features at Disneyland.

Saving the best for last, I went to go and visit my old friend, Indiana Jones. This was my favourite ride at Disney USA, embodying the true spirit of Dr Jones, dodging poison darts, booby-trapped tunnels, scraping past giant rolling boulders and a whole lot more. Disney Paris, for reasons unknown to me, replaced that fantastic experience with a lame roller coaster.

Utterly disappointed at being let down by Indy, I walked back over to Disney Studios to see if I could catch a showing of the two show’s I’d missed that day: Animagique and Cinemagique. I managed to see the last show of the latter, which makes me very glad. It certainly lifted my spirits a bit. Another bit of immersive cinematography that brought out a few chuckles.

After a day in the blazing sun (I couldn’t have asked for better whether these last four days, apart from maybe a bit more cloud cover) I headed back to home base. Just in time, it would seem, because twenty minutes into the train ride back, it started hailing.

The M?tro in mid-summer at rush hour is not a pleasant experience. However, I think it’s a fantastic system, and if we had it in SA and I didn’t live across the road from work, I’d use it all the time.

You get all kinds on the underground. This one guy either spent the whole trip either talking to me or his dog (an apparent cross between a Labrador and Daschund, intriguing), I couldn’t tell which.

Time for a different flavour of Paris. Today I went up to Montmarte, a centre of Toulouse le Trec’s Bohemian Revvovootion. An old, cobbled part of Paris, up on the hill overlooking the capital, very quant and nostalgic. The main attraction there is the Basilique du Sacre Cour, but I think it’s more likely the Moulin Rouge. The Red Windmill is in a veery seedy part of town, which I would not like to be in at night, so unfortunately my photos are missing the vivid red neon linings of the windmill.

When heading for Montmarte, I decided to take one M?tro stop beyond it, so I could start at the top of the hill and work my way down, but it turned out I just wound up on the other side of the hill and didn’t manage to avoid any uphills. Puffing up and down the hills in Montmarte was exhausting, so I headed back to the hotel for a rest.

Feeling I hadn’t filled my tourist quota for the day, I headed of the check out the (or rather, “a”) Pantheon, which is rather big.

After that I went back to have another stroll down Champs Elysees. Starting to feel I was all Parised out, I saw a Disney shop, and resolved to by a ticket for Disneyland (actually, the new Walt Disney Studios Park next to it) for tomorrow. Sacrilegious as it may sound, I just don’t think I have it in me to spend another day marching around a huge city and gloomy old buildings like this sightseeing, so I’m taking the day off to have some light-hearted fun.

I like old stuff. I’d heard there was a lot of old stuff at the Louvre, so I went to check it out. There’s a LOT of old stuff at the Louvre.

My definitive guide on Paris said to get there early, at opening time, 9 AM. Following several blunders on my part (that marvellous sense of direction again) and others (some festival caused the buses to two of the closest rail stops to be disrupted, so I had to find a last minute alternative) I got there at 9:15, fearing the worst, but the guide also suggests entering via the Carrousel entrance, which I did, and practically walked straight in.

And walked, and walked, and carried on walking. Three major wings, of four floors each. I reckon I got to see about 75% of the museum, absorbing about 15% of it. That would be the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian exhibits. Very interesting, especially if you can read the captions in French, which I can’t.

Speaking of Egypt, I think Hitler would have thought the new glass pyramids at the entrance were even uglier than the Eiffel tower, and I have to say, I would agree. Giant glass monstrosities like that have no place near a beautiful monument like the Louvre.

I felt quite bad for racing past the volumes of history before me, but there just wasn’t enough time (or, to be honest, energy) to give each exhibit the attention it deserved. Nonetheless, I did get to see the Mona Lisa (a tiny painting surrounded by hordes of snap-happy tourists) and the Venus de Milo (pretty much the same story, tourist-wise) and several other famous paintings and sculptures. It’s really quite impossible to appreciate them for their merits in a bustling place like that, but I guess that’s the way it has to be.

After four hours of walking I went for a well-earned sit in the Jardins de Touilleres and then headed up Champs Elysees past the Luxor obelisk (more misplaced Egyptian heritage, but at least this one’s the real deal) to the Arc de Triomphe. Very big.

After all that, my memory stick was getting pretty full, so I went back to the hotel to download the photos and have a bit of a rest, but then I found the elusive supermarket. I’ve been told things in France are pretty cheap if you get them from a super market, and they were right. I bought a bunch of buddy cokes at less than a quarter of the street rate and a French delicacy called a Croque-Monseur, known elsewhere as a toasted cheese and ham sandwich.

Refreshed after my snack I headed off to Notre Dame. Let me tell you, there’s no better value in Parisian sightseeing than this. No charge to enter, and it’s really, really breathtaking, inside and out. Also quite a moving experience hearing the organs and choristers reverberating around the colossal chamber.

Since it was nearby, I thought I’d visit the church of St Sulpice, of The Da Vinci Code fame. For starters, it was MUCH bigger than I’d envisioned – bordering on Notre Dame’s proportions. Also beautiful inside, but I was there to see the brass ‘Rose Line’ and the obelisk from the book. While I was waiting for some people taking snaps of it to clear off, my eye caught a printed note, pretty much saying that all the stuff in TDVC is balls. However, it explained the real purpose – it’s used to measure the various solstices/equinoxes. Being an engineer, this fascinates me, and I intend to revisit it on Tuesday (the Summer solstice) to see it in action. I have my suspicions I’ll be disappointed, though (while perusing ‘Cracking the Code’ in the English section of the Virgin Megastore on Champs Elysees it says the Gnomon is now defunct – nevertheless, what better place to visit on the Summer Solstice than a place used to time it?)

To Bill, whose Walk in the Woods inspired my travel-writing, and Neil, who inspired me to waffle.

After getting on my connecting Train at Lyon with only thirty seconds to spare, I was kind of hoping most of my train-hopping would be over when I arrived in Paris. Boy was I wrong! Thankfully I bought a 5-day unlimited pass to the Parisian public transport system, because after nabbing the M?tro from Gare de Lyon to what I thought was the closest stop to my hotel, I found that I needed to take the RER C to get to within 4 blocks of my hotel.

Then there was the issue of direction once I got out. Things look so plain and simple on a map, but in a bustling city with flyovers and onramps on just about every road, it’s utterly confusing in reality. I think it took me about an hour to walk those 4 blocks, with a few circles in between, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have blisters on my hands tomorrow from lugging a 20kg+ suitcase so far.

After circling the block where I was certain my hotel was supposed to be (opposite Pont Nelson Mandela) I gave up and went into a super-flashy hotel to ask directions. “Oh, it’s only two minutes by foot, right past the super-market” said a friendly and helpful receptionist. I’m still not sure where this super-market is, and it certainly took longer than two minutes carrying two weeks of clothes, steel-capped safety boots, a laptop and Order of the Phoenix (Potter-heads will nod in agreement here).

I finally got to the hotel, and when I got to the desk, I was ‘greeted’ by a surly, disinterested receptionist, the complete anti-thesis of the one up the street, and did immense damage to my high opinion of French hospitality that I’d built up in my two weeks around Grenoble. But I had bigger worries - my eye caught the daily single room rate on the board, and it was almost double the price I got with my online booking. I thought there’d been some screw up and I was going to have to pay some astronomical price to get the room I’d booked, but to my enormous relief, everything seemed to be in order (let’s see on check-out day).

I promptly went to my room and collapsed, exhausted from my day’s travel. After a brief rest I played around on the TV a bit – not an English channel to be had. Not even BBC World, which is all I’d been watching for the last two weeks in Allemont. Then I thought I’d try the WiFi internet access, but at seeing the rate (5 Euros/hour), I promptly switched off my laptop.

Time to get exploring. I figured I shouldn’t let the day go to waste (it was now 5pm) – after all, it’s still only dusky outside as I’m typing this (22:15 – Viva le Daylight Savings!)

I headed out from my hotel back towards the RER (overland train) station, and around the corner, to my overwhelming delight, found a bus stop with a route that goes straight to the station. The line I’m situated on goes right past Notre Dame up to the Eiffel tower. My reconnaissance visit to the infamous tower turned out to be the full tourist experience, however. The queues to the stairs that I’d been dreading were practically non-existent, and since I was sure my feet would be inoperable the next day, thought I’d better carpe diem and paid the 3.80 Euros to walk up (after all, the lifts were twice the price). The 328 stairs to the first level almost killed me, but after a brief walk around the perimeter reading most of the blurb on the landmarks you can see from the tower, I headed up to the second level. 668 stairs in all, and that’s probably not even half way to the summit.

I must say, when I first saw the tower after leaving the station, I shared Hitler’s sentiments, “Is that all? It’s ugly!” but once I got a bit closer, I had to admit it’s pretty impressive.

Then I ventured over the Seine on the Pont de l’Alma bridge, to the flyover where Princess Di, well, died, 8 years ago. There’s a replica of the flame of the Statue of Liberty above the tunnel, which has become an unofficial memorial to her. Even today there were two bouquets of flowers at the foot of it.

That was enough for one day, so I headed back to the hotel, and then scouted around a bit to find some semi-affordable sustenance (Oh, Ronald, where art thou?) and found a bar around the corner that had cheapish sandwiches. These comprise of tough, dry bread rolls, no butter, and ham. Not the mot delightful, but certainly filled the gap, especially accompanied by a Leffe beer, which is, to be honest, not very nice.

Hmm, this seems to be an awful lot of writing for only one evening’s sight-seeing. I don’t know if I’ll keep it up, but let’s see.

Right now it’s bed time.