Hoke’s Ramblings

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.